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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539748">Futile Devices</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/reflective_deer/pseuds/reflective_deer'>reflective_deer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Call Me By Your Name Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Human Catra (She-Ra), I own absolutely nothing, Will add more characters as I go - Freeform, this is basically me watching call me by your name again and being like "what if it was Glitra"?, underage because Glimmer is 17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:33:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>35,227</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539748</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/reflective_deer/pseuds/reflective_deer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm like you," Catra said. "I remember everything."</p><p>Glimmer stopped for a second. 'If you remember everything,' she wanted to say, 'and if you are really like me, then just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.'</p><p>--</p><p>Or; the Glitra Call Me By Your Name rewrite no one asked for, but I still did.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>76</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I obviously don't own CMBYN or She-Ra, or this fic would be canon.</p><p>The story will follow mostly the book, with some obvious differences, and not as explicit, but it's basically the same story. </p><p>Again, I own nothing here.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"<em>Later, Sparkles</em>." The nickname, the word, the voice, the attitude. </p><p>Glimmer had never heard anyone call her by such an annoying nickname to her face before. And she had never heard anyone use <em>"later"</em> to say goodbye before. It sounded harsh, curt, and dismissive, spoken with the veiled indifference of someone who didn’t seem to actually care to see or hear from her again.</p><p>It's the first thing she remembers whenever she thinks about Catra, and she can hear it still clear as day. </p><p>
  <em>"Later, Sparkles!"</em>
</p><p>Glimmer shuts her eyes, says the words, and she's back in Bright Moon, so many years ago. Staring down from her window into the tree-lined driveway, watching Catra step out of the cab, flannel red shirt, sleeves rolled up, mismatched eyes, the cat ears headband, freckles everywhere. Suddenly Catra is shaking Micah's hand, handing him her backpack, removing her suitcase from the trunk of the cab, chatting confidently. </p><p>It might have started right there and then: the shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, the cat headband, the way her eyes looked around, eager to drink in every detail, every stride already asking; "Which way to the beach?"</p><p>Another summer's house guest. Another bore. Or it should have been.</p><p>Then, almost without thinking, and with her back already turned to the car, Catra waved the back of her free hand and uttered a careless "Later!" to another passenger in the car who she had split the fare from the station with. No name added, no pleasantries to smooth out the brisk goodbye, nothing. Her one-word send-off: bold, and blunt— Just like Catra.</p><p>She watched as her mother stepped forward as well, shaking Catra's hand and smiling politely. "Angella"</p><p>"Catra," The brunette replied easily, although to her credit there was sincerity in her tone as she spoke. "Thank you for having me in your home."</p><p>Glimmer finally turned heel and began to make her way downstairs. ‘You watch,’ she thought, ‘This is how she'll say goodbye to us when the time comes. With a blunt, slapdash, "<strong>later!</strong>"’</p><p>Meanwhile, they'd have to put up with her for six long weeks. </p><p>Just as she reached the end of the stairs, her mother realized her presence and gestured for the pink haired girl to approach. "Help Catra bring her things to your room," Angella whispered</p><p>"Ah, Glimmer, Catra. Catra, Glimmer." Micah introduced them. “My daughter.” He supplied.</p><p>The brunette finally looked at her, studying the pudgy girl intently.  Glimmer froze up for a second, having never seen anything like those mismatched eyes before. She could feel herself scrutinized under the piercing gaze, as if they could somehow read Glimmer’s mind down to her most private thoughts. "Hello," she managed out.</p><p>"Hi." Came the non-committal reply, and just like that her attention was elsewhere again. Disappointment washed over Glimmer, she was thoroughly put off. Catra seemed the insufferable, unapproachable sort.</p><p>"Just follow her, she'll take you to your room," Micah smiled, still as friendly as ever. "You're very welcome here, our home is your home."</p><p>Taking in summer guests was her parents' way of helping young teens who had a rough life find a new home or young adults in a similar situation get some direction in life. For six weeks each summer Glimmer had to vacate her bedroom and move one room down the corridor into a much smaller room that had once belonged to her grandmother. </p><p>Summer residents didn't have to pay anything, they were given the full run of the house, and could basically do anything they pleased, provided they spent an hour or so a day helping either her father or mother with their work and assorted paperwork.</p><p>They became part of the family, and after about fifteen years of doing this, Glimmer had gotten used to a shower of postcards and gift packages not only around Christmas, but all year long from people who were now totally devoted to her family and would go out of their way to visit. </p><p>At meals there were frequently two or three other guests, sometimes neighbors or relatives, sometimes colleagues, lawyers, doctors, the rich and famous who'd drop by to see her parents on their way to their own summer houses.</p><p>Glimmer's father, who had gone through a bad experience with a mentor when young, loved nothing better than to help some stranger and have them telling him their life story under the hot summer sun. </p><p>Catra stayed in silence as she was lead around the house, yet she still looked at everything with those attentive eyes. As they finally entered the bedroom, Catra all but jumped on the bed, looking exhausted. Glimmer felt a pang of pity for the older girl, it had probably been a long trip. Maybe the reason for her behavior was just that, tiredness. Maybe.</p><p>"I'm next door, if you need anything." Explained, "We do have to share a bathroom, though... And since my door is busted yours is kind of my only way out."</p><p>No answer. </p><p>A closer inspection revealed what Glimmer had already suspected. Catra was sound asleep. Shaking her head in both amusement and disbelief, she closed the door that separated their rooms, leaving the brunette to her rest.</p><p>Glimmer sat by her window once more, mind still on their newest guest. She could grow to like Catra. With her bright, unique eyes and freckled face.</p><p>Within days, Glimmer would learn to hate her. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maybe it started in the morning after Catra's arrival. During breakfast when they sat next to each other and Glimmer noticed that, despite having just arrived, and originally being from the Fight Zone, the color on the palms of the brunette's hands were already sun-kissed. Even the soft skin of her soles, of her throat, of the bottom of her forearms, which shouldn’t really have been exposed to much sun. Almost golden, as glistening as caramel. The only paleness in her being the faint scars. They told her things about Catra she never knew to ask.</p><p>Her eyes followed, from Catra’s arms to her fingers, disastrously trying to crack her soft boiled egg. Glimmer wanted to laugh as the other girl begrudgingly pushed away the cup, only a small bit of the shell pierced, and focused on her coffee instead.</p><p>Juliet approached the table, carrying juice. She set it down before noticing the discarded egg. “Let me,” offered, expertly opening it in seconds. Juliet had worked in the house for as long as Glimmer could remember, cooking, cleaning, she was almost a second mother.</p><p>“Thank you,” Catra smiled softly, and Glimmer chastised herself for not offering to help first, for not being the one at the end of that smile. Juliet poured them all glasses of juice before heading back to the kitchen.</p><p>“Did you recover from your trip, Catra?” Micah asked kindly, a knowing grin on his face</p><p>“More or less, thank you.” She nodded. She sounded embarrassed, maybe for having slept so soundly the day before. They hadn’t even been able to wake her up for dinner.</p><p>Glimmer looked down at her own food, carefully spreading honey over her bread. Then, after taking a breath, she finally spoke, lifting her head again. "I can show you around." Her voice sounded unnaturally loud.</p><p>Once again those mismatched eyes fell on hers, and Glimmer realized she had <em>wanted </em>them on her. "Cool, thanks," came the reply, "Are we far from town? I'd like to start a bank account."</p><p>Both of her parents blinked, interested. "None of our residents has ever had a local bank account." Angella explained. Glimmer could tell it had also been a question, but Catra either didn't notice or didn't care to answer. </p><p>"I can take you." The pink haired girl smiled, breaking the silence that stretched in between them.</p><p>Another nod. Then those eyes were off to the scenery around them, studying the trees with the intensity and curiosity of someone who might find the answers to life written on the leaves of a peach. "Is this your orchard? It's beautiful."</p><p>Micah beamed, proud. "These are Angella's trees, peaches, cherries, apricot..." </p><p>"Pomegranates." Angella added, but Catra didn't seem to be listening anymore. She had finally gotten back to her egg, and was eating it enthusiastically, some of the yolk dripping down to the plate underneath its cup. "Have another egg." Motioned to the pan on the middle of the table.</p><p>Catra shook her head, and spoke. "Thank you, but I know myself. If I have second egg, I'll have a third, and more."</p><p>Glimmer had never heard someone Catra's age say, <em>'I know myself'</em>. It sounded intimidating. Because with her attentive eyes, and her careful words and gestures, Catra did seem to know herself.</p><p>And Glimmer found that she too, wanted to know her.</p><p>--</p><p>Or perhaps it started during their first walk together before leaving to town when Glimmer showed her the house and its surrounding area. And, one thing leading to the other, managed to take her past the very old forged-iron metal gate towards the abandoned train tracks that used to connect Bright Moon and its castle ruins to the Whispering Woods.</p><p> "Is there an abandoned station house somewhere?" Catra asked, looking through the trees under the scalding sun. She sounded careful, as if she was trying to ask the right questions.</p><p>"No, there was never a station house. The train simply stopped when you asked." </p><p>She was curious about the kingdom, something Glimmer was eager to talk about, sharing secrets and jokes she had a feeling Catra would appreciate. She did. And then she asked about the train; the rails seemed so narrow. It was a two-wagon train bearing the royal insignia, Glimmer explained. Romani lived in it now. They'd been living there ever since her mother was a girl. The Romani had hauled the two derailed cars farther inland.</p><p>“Would you like to see them?”</p><p>"Later, maybe." Polite indifference, as if she'd saw through Glimmer's attempt to be friendly and was pushing her away.</p><p>It stung.</p><p>Instead, they finally took the bikes and headed into town so Catra could open her bank account. The conversation was no better on wheels than on foot.</p><p>Along the way, they stopped for something to drink. Glimmer took a long swill from a large bottle of mineral water and passed it to Catra, who spilled some on her hand and rubbed her face with it, running the wet fingers through her brown locks before handing it back to Glimmer. The water was insufficiently cold, leaving behind an unsatisfying feeling of thirst. </p><p>"What does one do around here?" Catra asked as they sat on a booth outside, the sun still upon them.</p><p>"Nothing." Glimmer muttered, glancing at the pensive look on her companion's face. "Wait for summer to end."</p><p>"What does one do in the winter, then?"</p><p>Glimmer smiled at the answer she was about to give. </p><p>Catra got the gist and said, "Don't tell me: wait for summer to come, right?"</p><p>Glimmer decided she liked having her mind read. Catra understood, said nothing, they laughed. She then asked what Glimmer did for fun. She played tennis. Swam. Went out at night. Jogged. Transcribed music. Read. Catra said she jogged too. Early in the morning. “Where does one jog around here?”</p><p>“Along the promenade, mostly. I can show you if you want to."</p><p>It hit her in the face just when she was starting to like Catra again: “Later, maybe."</p><p>Glimmer had put music and reading last on her list, thinking that, with the brazen attitude Catra had displayed so far, they would be last on hers as well. A few hours later, when she saw the guitar the brunette had bought while in town, and realized that music was probably not an insignificant part of her life, Glimmer decided that she needed to perform some clever backpedaling and let Catra know that her real interests lay right alongside hers. </p><p>What unsettled her, though, was not the hard work needed to redeem herself. </p><p>It was the realization that, in the town, during their conversation by the train tracks, and even during breakfast, Glimmer had all along, without even admitting it, already been trying—and failing—to win Catra over. </p><p>--</p><p>But it might have started way later, without Glimmer noticing anything at all. She saw Catra, but hadn't really seen her yet, she was in the wings. Glimmer noticed her, but nothing clicked, nothing “caught”. And then, before she was even remotely close to ready, the six weeks that were offered had almost passed and Catra was just about to leave, and Glimmer was scrambling to come to terms with something that had been brewing for weeks under her very nose. Something which bore all the symptoms of what she should've recognized a lot sooner. </p><p>How could Glimmer not have known? </p><p>She knows desire when she sees it—and yet, with Catra, it slipped by completely. What Glimmer thought she wanted was the devious smile that would suddenly light up Catra’s face each time she'd read her mind. The sense of understanding, camaraderie. But all she really wanted was those eyes. Those eyes staring at her so intensely that Glimmer could die.</p><p>At dinner that evening, Glimmer sensed those eyes on her as she was explaining the latest song she'd been transcribing. Glimmer was seventeen that year and, being the youngest at the table and the least likely to be listened to, she had developed the habit of smuggling as much information into the fewest possible words. After she had finished explaining her transcription, she became aware of the sharp glance coming from her left. </p><p>It thrilled and flattered her; Catra was interested—maybe she liked her. But when, after taking her time, Glimmer finally turned to face her and take in her glance, she met a cold and icy glare—something so hostile that bordered on cruelty.</p><p>It undid Glimmer completely. What had she done to deserve this? Where was the kind Catra who had laughed and joked with her just a few hours earlier? Who snorted when Glimmer told her that Bright Moon was the only kingdom in Etheria where even the prison had been so embellished. Catra had immediately laughed and recognized the veiled allusion to the Fright Zone’s minimalist and military architecture.</p><p>Catra was going to be difficult. To think that Glimmer had almost fallen for the skin of her hands, her freckles, the stupid cat headband—and her eyes, which you could never stare long enough, but needed to keep staring to find out why you couldn’t.</p><p>Glimmer shot her a similarly hostile glance.</p><p>Better to stay away from her, she thought.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Juliet is the Bright Moon general. Since we don't really have names of any servants that I can remember, I used her to be Mafalda.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For the two following days their conversations came to a sudden halt. On the long balcony that their bedrooms shared, total avoidance: just a makeshift hello, good morning, nice weather, shallow chitchat. Then, without explanation, things resumed.</p>
<p>"Do you want to go jogging this morning?" Catra asked as Glimmer stepped into her room, heading towards the door to the hallway.</p>
<p>"No, not really." She replied, trying her best to sound distant.</p>
<p>"Well, let’s swim, then."</p>
<p>Glimmer paused, finally turning to look at the brunette. Catra was laying on the bed, shirtless. The yellow bikini top contrasting against the caramel of her skin and reminding Glimmer of the amber of the girl's left eye. Expectantly, carefully, she stared at the mismatched eyes, not even realizing she was holding her breath until she finally let it out, noticing the earnest, kind expression on her face. "Ok." She muttered, nodding mechanically.</p>
<p>"Go change, I'll wait for you." Catra grinned, apparently pleased with the answer as she jumped off of the bed and rushed to grab a few of her things. Her shorts were black, with accents the same shade as her top, and Glimmer's eyes followed the skin of her legs as she realized that had been the first time she saw Catra wearing something other than pants.</p>
<p>She chastised herself and turned away, rushing to her room and closing the door behind her. So much for staying away from Catra.</p>
<p>The older girl wasn't actually that fond of water, as Glimmer quickly found out. But she enjoyed the exercise and she enjoyed laying around in the sun. "The Fright Zone doesn't get much sunlight, does it?"</p>
<p>Catra shook her head, eyes closed as she stretched out on the grass next to the water, absorbing the sun. Glimmer had half a mind to make a cat joke about how content she looked. "The Fright Zone doesn't get much of anything except shitty people and fog from the machinery. The sunlight can't really get through." </p>
<p>'How are you so tanned?' She wanted to ask. 'How come you don't smell like smoke and metal like the other people from the Fright Zone?'</p>
<p>"But," The brunette smirked, "If you go up high enough, you can get above all of it and get some real sun and fresh air."</p>
<p>Glimmer smiled, both at the pleased expression on Catra's face and the image of the girl sneaking around and climbing through the Fright Zone's old towers. She had never been there, but knew enough from books and other residents to be aware those towers were heavily guarded and no civilians could access them. "How does Bright Moon compare?"</p>
<p>"I think I like the glimmering."</p>
<p>The pain, the fumbling around people Glimmer doesn’t want to lose, the desperate cunning she brings to everyone she wants and craves to be wanted by, the screens she puts up as though between her and the world today—all these started the summer Catra came into Bright Moon. </p>
<p>They are embossed on every song that was a hit that summer, in every novel Glimmer read during and after Catra’s stay, on anything from the smell of rosemary on hot days to the frantic rattle of the cicadas in the afternoon—smells and sounds she’d grown up with and known every year of her life until then, but that had suddenly turned on her and acquired an inflection forever colored by the events of that summer.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>The next day, Glimmer was thrilled to see Catra didn’t ignore her, that she was still being kind. And that, therefore, she could allow herself the luxury of passing the brunette on her way to the garden and not having to pretend she was unaware of her. They jogged early that morning—all the way up to the Bright Moon ruins and back. Early the next morning they swam. Then, the day after, they jogged again. </p>
<p>Glimmer liked racing all the way to the ruins, or by the forest, liked to run along the shore and the promenade when there wasn’t a soul about yet and the house seemed a distant mirage. She liked how Catra talked to her like a friend, how she would joke with Glimmer, their sense of humor so delightfully similar. She liked how Catra would put her hair up in a messy ponytail, the cat headband still present even when they swam. She liked watching Catra watch the world. How her eyes drank everything around them, as if trying to permanently memorize everything. Glimmer did the same with the older girl, memorizing every freckle, every scar, the birthmark on her shoulder, her mannerisms. </p>
<p>Glimmer liked it when they ran with their feet aligned, left with left, and struck the ground at the same time.</p>
<p>The alternation of running and swimming was apparently Catra's 'routine'. </p>
<p>"Do you run everyday?" Glimmer inquired. </p>
<p>"I always exercise, even when I'm sick. I'd exercise in bed if I had to." A smirk graced her lips, the one Glimmer had committed to memory already. "Even if I slept with someone new the night before," Catra said, "I'll still head out for a jog early in the morning. The only time I didn’t exercise was when they operated on me." </p>
<p>When Glimmer asked her what for, the answer she had promised never to incite in Catra came like the thwack of a jack-in-the-box wearing a menacing smirk.</p>
<p>"Later, Sparkles."</p>
<p>Perhaps she was out of breath and didn’t want to talk too much, or just wanted to concentrate on her running. Or perhaps it was her way of teasing Glimmer, like a close friend would—totally harmless.</p>
<p>But there was something at once chilling and off-putting in the sudden distance that crept between them. The distance that Catra seemed to purposely intend to keep and maybe even widen by uttering the annoying and demeaning nickname. It came so sudden and felt so insulting that Glimmer almost tripped on her own feet. No one had called her that before in her life, even though her hair and eyes did sparkle according to her mood, something she always felt a bit self-conscious of. Having Catra call attention to it somehow stung harder than she would like to admit.</p>
<p>It was always the same; she would feed Glimmer slack, and more slack, and then yank away at any semblance of real fellowship. The cold gaze always returned. </p>
<p>They didn't speak another word to each other for the rest of the day.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>The next day, while Catra was practicing with her guitar at what had become 'her table' in the back garden by the pool and the younger girl was lying nearby on the grass, she felt the cold gaze right away. Catra had turned to stare at her while the metal vibrated underneath her fingers, and when Glimmer suddenly raised her face, there it was: cutting, cruel, like a glistening blade instantly retracted the moment its victim caught sight of it. Catra gave away a bland smile, as though to say, ‘No point hiding it now.’</p>
<p>"Thought you were sleeping, Sparkles."</p>
<p><strong>Sparkles.</strong> The word evoked the familiar sting once more, reminding her of the distance that seemed impossible for Glimmer to reach across. Would this be a regular thing now?</p>
<p>She should've stayed away from Catra.</p>
<p>She must have noticed Glimmer was shaken, and in an effort to make it up to her continued to talk while playing the guitar. Glimmer was too much on her guard to answer with candor. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, hearing her scramble for replies made Catra suspect that perhaps more was amiss than Glimmer was showing. “Want to hear me play the song you were transcribing the other day?” </p>
<p>“But I thought you hated it." Glimmer spoke, sounding far too weak and bitter for her own taste. What was it about Catra that rendered her like this?</p>
<p>“Hated it? Whatever gave you that idea?” The brunette inquired, confused. They argued back and forth. “Just listen, will you?” </p>
<p>“The same one? Do you really know it?” 'Did you really pay attention to me when I spoke of it?' </p>
<p>Catra grinned. “The same one, I know it.”</p>
<p>And then she stood up and walked into the living room, leaving the large French windows open so that Glimmer could hear her play it on the piano. She didn't know Catra could play it as well. She followed the brunette halfway and, leaning on the windows’ wooden frame, listened for a while. </p>
<p>“You changed it, what did you do to it?” Glimmer frowned</p>
<p>“I just played it the way Liszt would have played it had he jimmied around with it.”</p>
<p>Glimmer groaned, exasperated. So, Catra started playing the piece again. After a while: “I can’t believe you changed it again.”</p>
<p>“Well, not by much. This is just how Busoni would have played it if he had altered Liszt’s version.” Shrugged</p>
<p>“Can’t you just play the Bach the way Bach wrote it?”</p>
<p>“But Bach never wrote it for guitar. In fact, we’re not even sure it’s by Bach at-”</p>
<p>“Forget I asked.”</p>
<p>“Okay, okay. No need to get so worked up,” Catra said, feigning grudging acquiescence. And against her better judgment, Glimmer found it amusing. “How about you help me?" She slid over to the side, motioning for the younger girl to sit beside her.</p>
<p>"... Really?"</p>
<p>"This was transcribed by you, it's only fair." </p>
<p>Reddening slightly, she sat down. Catra signaled for her to start, and with shaky fingers, Glimmer complied. She had never played with someone before, aside from her mother guiding her hands when she was young, it felt strange. It demanded and brought a sort of synchrony and understanding she had never experienced with another person. </p>
<p>Once the song was over, Catra turned to Glimmer, the rare kind smile on her lips. "It’s a very young Bach. It’s dedicated to his brother.” </p>
<p>Glimmer hadn't known that, but it stirred something deep inside of her. And each time they would play it, with each note played, Glimmer felt as if they were exchanging little gifts, tokens of something very beautiful that would take no genius to figure out whenever Glimmer threw in an extended cadenza, just for Catra. They were—and Glimmer should have recognized the signs long before that—flirting.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Later that evening in her diary, Glimmer wrote:<em> I was exaggerating when I said I thought she hated my transcription. What I meant to say was: I thought she hated me. I was hoping she'd persuade me of the opposite—and she did, for a while. Why won't I believe it tomorrow morning?</em></p>
<p>It unsettled her. Seeing how Catra could flip from ice to sunshine. From camaraderie and kind smiles to 'later, Sparkles'. Glimmer wondered if she flipped back and forth in the same way. </p>
<p>A knock on the door broke her from her thoughts. She turned, ready to tell whoever it was to come in, but paused as a piece of paper was slipped from under the door instead, followed by retreating footsteps. Glimmer picked it up, curious, and was met with Catra's messy handwriting.</p>
<p>
  <em>I look forward to playing with you again later.</em><br/>
<em>P.S.: We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.</em>
</p>
<p>Glimmer held the note tightly as if it might've disappeared otherwise. She had been perfectly willing to brand Catra as difficult and unapproachable and have nothing more to do with her. But with one note, one song, Catra had Glimmer's pouting apathy changed into 'I'll play anything with you whenever you ask me, because I <strong>want</strong> to do things for you, <strong>with</strong> you, and even when you go back to your cold glares and insulting nicknames, I'll never forget that this conversation and that song occurred between us.'</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for the feedback, guys!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Then came that July Sunday afternoon when the house suddenly emptied. Both Angella and Micah had gone to visit his sister, Castaspella, making Catra and Glimmer the only ones there, and <em>fire</em> tore through Glimmer's guts—because "fire" was the first and easiest word that came to her when she tried to make sense of it. </p>
<p>Her mind played the events of night before, when Glimmer had been awoken by a noise outside the window of her balcony. She wasn’t the lightest of sleepers, yet she had heard it clearly, and suddenly she knew that someone was in her room. Someone had sat down on her bed, right next to her, and she could feel her whole body fill with expectation as she sensed, even with her eyes closed, even with the logical part of her brain telling her to be afraid, that it was Catra. </p>
<p>She could feel Catra thinking, thinking, thinking, and then finally starting to move towards Glimmer, fingers softly and gently running through her hair. It reminded Glimmer of being a child, of coming home after a long day and laying her head on her mother's lap. She wanted to tell Catra that she felt at home right then and there. She felt as if she had came home after years away, came home to a place where someone cherished and understood her, where someone knew, just knew, what she wanted and needed. Glimmer felt like everything had finally fallen into place and after seventeen years, she'd realized all she'd been doing, without Catra there, was wrong. Yet Glimmer didn't move a muscle, not wanting to risk doing anything to show she was awake or to let Catra change her mind and go away. </p>
<p>Feigning to be fast asleep, her mind kept repeating, 'This is not, cannot, had better not be a dream.' </p>
<p>And then Catra was suddenly gone and though it seemed too true to be a dream, Glimmer sat up in the dark, unable to tell if it had been real or not. </p>
<p>That afternoon she'd waited and waited in her room, in a trance-like state of anticipation. The "fire" hadn't been a fire of passion, not a ravaging fire, but something paralyzing, like the fire of a cluster bomb that had sucked up the oxygen around it and left Glimmer panting because she couldn't talk, couldn't move. </p>
<p>Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute and she would die if Catra didn't knock on her door. And at the same time, like she would die if Catra did show up.</p>
<p>Glimmer had left the French windows ajar and was laying in her bed, like the night before, her entire body on fire. Fire like a pleading that said, 'Please, please, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I've been imagining all this, dreaming it. Because it can't possibly be true for you as well, and if it's true for you too, then you're the cruelest woman alive.'</p>
<p>Eventually Catra did walk into Glimmer's room, without knocking, as if summoned by her prayers. "How come you're not with the others at the beach?" She inquired, those eyes making Glimmer's head spin. She was wearing a new bikini top, entirely white, with jeans shorts. “Or with your folks at your Aunt’s?”</p>
<p>And all she could think of saying, though she couldn't bring herself to say it, was, 'To be with you. To be with you, Catra.'</p>
<p>Because that was what Glimmer wanted. To be with Catra on her bed, or in Catra's bed, which was Glimmer's bed during the other months of the year. She wanted Catra's fingers on her hair again. She wanted Catra to do more, to touch her more. To ask for Glimmer's permission, and convince her to not say no. She wanted to convey, without speaking, without moving, that she'd be willing to yield if Catra pushed.</p>
<p>What she managed out instead was a, "I didn't feel like it." That probably sounded as unconvincing to Catra as it did to Glimmer.</p>
<p>Humming, the brunette stepped closer before sitting on the bed, like she had done that night. Glimmer held her breath. "My bed, your bed, still kinda smells like you, even with the fresh sheets and everything." Then Catra added, almost as a second thought, "Something sweet."</p>
<p>"I'm sorry?" She blinked, confused at the sudden change in subject.</p>
<p>"I'm not." Catra replied easily. A lonely blackbird, sitting in the nearby tree, sang a few notes that were immediately drowned out by the rattle of the cicadas. "We should go play some volleyball with the others."</p>
<p>Glimmer swallowed, the room felt too small. "Ok."</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>They played doubles, and during a break, it happened. The <em>fire</em> had shifted and given in to an entire different sensation as Catra put her free arm around Glimmer, gently squeezing her thumb and forefingers into the younger girl's shoulder in imitation of a hug-massage—which felt too chummy-chummy for someone like Catra to be doing. Glimmer quickly wrenched herself free from the touch, because a moment longer and she would have slackened like one of those tiny wooden toys whose body collapsed as soon as the mainsprings were touched. </p>
<p>"Did I press a nerve or something? I didn't mean to hurt you." Catra apologized, clearly taken aback by the reaction. She must have felt mortified, suspecting she had either hurt Glimmer or touched her the wrong way. </p>
<p>The last thing Glimmer wanted was to discourage her. Still, her mouth blurted a, "It didn't hurt!" before she could stop herself. But if it wasn't pain that had prompted such a reaction, what other explanation could account for Glimmer shrugging Catra off so brusquely? “I- I’m just a bit sore.”</p>
<p>Catra still seemed surprised by the reaction but gave every sign of believing that the ‘soreness’ was the reason for it. Or maybe it was her way of letting Glimmer off the hook and pretending she wasn't aware of the lie. </p>
<p>It never occurred to Glimmer that what had totally panicked her when Catra touched her was exactly what startled virgins when touched for the first time by the person they desired: Catra had stirred nerves in her she never knew existed, and that produced far, far more disturbing pleasures than she was used to. </p>
<p>Catra must have already suspected something right then and there. "Here, let me make it better." She was testing Glimmer, trying to gauge the reaction while massaging the younger girl's shoulders. "Relax," The brunette snickered. </p>
<p>"I <strong>am</strong> relaxing." Glimmer grunted</p>
<p>"Yeah, right. Feel this," She said to Perfuma, one of the girls closest to them. "It's all knots." Glimmer felt new hands on her back. "Here," Catra ordered, pressing Perfuma's flattened palm hard. "Feel it? She should relax more." </p>
<p>"You <em>should</em> relax more," The blonde parroted. </p>
<p>Glimmer felt as if she didn't know how to speak at all. "I- I said I'm fine." She stammered, trying to get her feelings across because otherwise, the silence between them would give her away— which was why anything, even the most spluttered nonsense, was preferable to silence. Silence would expose her. </p>
<p>Expose the fact she had swooned and almost leaned into Catra and said 'Don't stop'. Had Catra noticed? </p>
<p>That was the feeling she took to her diary that evening: The "swoon."</p>
<p>
  <em>Why did I swoon? And how could it have happen so easily—just let Catra touch me somewhere and I go totally limp and will-less? Just like the night she ran her fingers through my hair... </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Is this what people mean by melting? And why was I so afraid? Was I afraid that Catra would have laughed at me, told everyone? Was I afraid to be ignored, rejected, to be told I'm too young to know what I'm doing? </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Or is it because I was afraid Catra would act on it? Do I <span class="u">want </span>Catra to act?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Would I prefer a lifetime of longing, of keeping this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not knowing, not-not-not knowing? To be quiet, say nothing, because I can't say 'yes,' and I don't want to say 'no'? Is this why people say 'maybe' when all they really mean is, 'Please, just ask me once more, and once more after that’?</em>
</p>
<p>The despair aimed at herself must have given her features something bordering on annoyance. It never crossed Glimmer's mind that Catra might have mistaken it as aimed at her. And it never crossed her mind that maybe Catra might have found her avoidance offensive and retaliated with the cold glare Glimmer had gotten used to seeing.</p>
<p>"Alright. Well, later, Sparkles." Shrugging, Catra stepped away, hurrying to join back in the game, and Glimmer tried to deny how much she wished Catra hadn't left.</p>
<p>Glimmer tried to deny so many things—that she longed to touch Catra's skin when it glistened in the sun with that caramel sheen; that she loved how her freckles turned clearer every day; that her piercing eyes, becoming ever more piercing with every glance, made Glimmer <em>swoon</em> just thinking of them. All of this Glimmer denied, and believed her denials. But soon it became glaringly obvious that there was something impossibly compelling pulling Glimmer closer to Catra. Something she couldn't deny no matter how hard she tried.</p>
<p>Catra, on the other hand, never seemed to deny herself anything. She seemed okay with herself. She was okay with her body, with her looks, with her cat headband, with her choice of books, music, films, friends. She was okay with ruining her favorite pair of jeans. "I can buy another one just like it." She had invited one of Glimmer's friends, Mermista, for a 'midnight spin' in a motorboat. She was rejected. That was okay. Catra tried again a few days later, was turned down again, and this time even made light of it, not caring if everyone around Bright Moon heard she had asked another woman out and been rejected. Mermista too was okay with it, and, had she spent another week with them, Glimmer suspected she probably would have given in and gone out to sea for a 'midnight spin' with Catra. </p>
<p>All of that confidence, the fact that Catra '<em>knew herself</em>' and was ok with all of it, the fire, the swoon... All of those, in the end, drove Glimmer to Catra even further. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One night during dinner, Micah and Catra appeared, already deep into conversation and apparently uninterested in filling anyone else on who exactly they were discussing. It was clear, though, that neither shared any love for whoever they spoke about. Catra in particular seemed thoroughly put off. It was when Glimmer realized that the laid-back, unflappable, unfazed twenty-year-old who was so heedlessly okay with so many things in life had, in fact, weak spots in her armor.</p>
<p>"I understand you, better than you know." Her father had said. “But she <strong>can</strong> care for her-“</p>
<p>"Is that what you really think?" Catra interrupted, unaware that Micah, while very easygoing himself, did not always like being contradicted, much less being interrupted, though he went along with both. </p>
<p>"Yes, I do." Insisted. </p>
<p>"I don't agree at all. I find her arrogant, abusive, and downright evil. She uses fear and fake kindness to manipulate others because she needs and likes to control people to get what she wants. You can't win <strong>even</strong> if you're her favorite. And her favor is nothing more than her thinking you can be of use to her, that you can reflect well on her and make her proud. She's never cared for anyone except herself."</p>
<p>It surprised Glimmer that Catra could get so invested when she was usually so aloof. And it surprised her that Catra could intuit so clearly the manner of someone's thinking. Was she already familiar with this same mode of thinking? But what surprised Glimmer the most was how her ability to intuit things was exactly the way Glimmer herself might have intuited them.</p>
<p>Later, when they were all sitting together, Catra offered, as if she'd suddenly hit on a solution to what promised to be a dull night indoors. "How about catching a movie?" </p>
<p>Glimmer's mother, as was her habit those days, had earlier during dinner been urging her daughter to try to go out with friends more often. It bordered on a lecture. </p>
<p>Catra was still new in town, so it was true that Glimmer must have seemed as good a movie partner as any. But she had asked the question in far too breezy and spontaneous a manner, as though she wanted Glimmer and everyone else in the living room to <em>know</em> that she was hardly invested in going to the movies and could just as easily stay home. However the carefree inflection of her offer was off, and it became clear to the younger girl: Catra was only pretending.</p>
<p>She was, in fact, picking up on Angella's comments and was offering to go for Glimmer's benefit. Glimmer smiled, not at the offer, but at the kindness behind it. Catra immediately caught her smile. And having caught it, smiled back, almost in self-mockery. Smiled to confess she'd been caught, but also to show she was a good enough sport to own up to it. </p>
<p>The whole thing thrilled Glimmer. The notion she was finally beginning to understand Catra, read through her signs, unmask the brunette. That evening, as they biked to the movie theater, Glimmer was—and she didn't care to hide it—riding on air. </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>But, if Catra was so observant and good at reading signs and intuit what someone was thinking, wouldn't she have noticed?</p>
<p>Wouldn't she have noticed the meaning behind Glimmer's abrupt shrinking away from her hand? Noticed that the younger girl had leaned into her grip? Not have known that Glimmer didn't want her to let go? Not have sensed that when Catra started massaging her, Glimmer's inability to relax was her last refuge, her last defense, her last pretense, that she had by no means resisted, that it had been a fake resistance, that Glimmer was incapable of resisting and didn't want to resist, no matter what Catra did? </p>
<p>Not known, when once again no one was home except for them, and Catra entered her room and asked her what she wanted to do that day, that the reason why Glimmer refused to answer and simply shrugged her shoulders under her gaze, was because she couldn't gather sufficient breath to speak? </p>
<p>"Bad allergy, I'm tired." She'd said, hoping and praying that the older girl would just turn around and leave, that she hadn't noticed what Glimmer had been doing all alone in bed.</p>
<p>"I have an allergy too," Catra replied. "We probably have the same one." </p>
<p>Again Glimmer shrugged her shoulders.</p>
<p>"You're all flushed." By then her eyes had fallen to the shorts Glimmer was wearing. Had she noticed Glimmer was wearing it lower than was decent? "Want to go for a swim?" </p>
<p>"Later, maybe," Said, echoing Catra's words but also trying to say as little as possible before being spotted as out of breath. </p>
<p>"Let's go now." Catra extended her hand to help the smaller girl get up. </p>
<p>Glimmer grabbed it almost as a reflex and, turning on her side to prevent herself from staring at those eyes, asked, "Must we?" That was the closest she would ever come to saying, <em>'Stay. Just stay with me. Let your hand travel where mine just was, take my shorts off, take me. You <strong>must</strong> know who I was thinking of, how wet I am, use that hand to feel for yourself.'</em></p>
<p>How could Catra <em>not</em> have picked up on any of that?</p>
<p>"I'll meet you downstairs." Declared, letting go of Glimmer's hand and walking out of the room. </p>
<p>The younger girl hit her head on the pillow over and over again. Had Catra known? Glimmer looked down at herself, her shorts were still clearly unbuttoned. She must have. That must have been why she walked out of the room. How could Glimmer have been so careless, so thoughtless, so totally stupid? </p>
<p>How could Catra <em>not</em> have known?</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>After that incident, Glimmer seldom stayed in her room during the day. Instead, she had appropriated a round table with an umbrella the back garden by the pool. Adora, the previous summer resident, had liked working alone in her room or just with Angella at her office, occasionally stepping out onto the balcony to get a glimpse of the sea or the kitchen for lunch. Catra liked company.</p>
<p>She began by sharing Glimmer's table but eventually grew to like throwing a large sheet on the grass and lying on it, flanked by paperwork and letters and what she liked to call her "things": lemonade, suntan lotion, books, sunglasses, colored pens, and music, which she either listened to with headphones or played herself on the guitar, so that it was near impossible to speak to her unless she was speaking first. </p>
<p>Sometimes, when Glimmer came downstairs with her books in the morning, Catra was already sprawled in the sun wearing a bikini. Then they'd go jogging or swimming, and return to find breakfast waiting.</p>
<p>Then Catra got in the habit of leaving her "things" on the grass and lying right on the tiled edge of the pool—called 'heaven,' short for "This is heaven," as she often said after lunch, "I'm going to heaven now."</p>
<p>"How long were you in heaven this morning?" Glimmer would ask.</p>
<p>"Two hours."</p>
<p>Lying on her belly doing her paperwork or answering letters, wearing her headphones, she looked like someone who lacked for nothing. Glimmer couldn't understand this feeling. She envied her.</p>
<p>"Listen to this," Catra said, removing her headphones, and proceeded to read aloud something she couldn't believe someone had written to her. "Doesn't she sound like a bitch to you? Your father doesn't think so." </p>
<p>It had seemed dry and emotionless, but not nearly as bad as Catra clearly seemed to think it was. Then again, Glimmer didn't know this person. She didn't know if those words should mean something to her.</p>
<p>"Isn't what my father thinks of her irrelevant?" Glimmer raised an eyebrow. "Or me, for that matter? Who she is with him and who she is with you are probably very different people. I'm sure you have your reasons."</p>
<p>Catra thought for a while as though weighing Glimmer's words. "That's the kindest thing anyone's said to me in months"— spoken ever so earnestly, as if she was hit by a sudden revelation.</p>
<p>Glimmer felt ill at ease, looked away, and finally muttered the first thing that came to mind: "Kind?"</p>
<p>"Yes, kind."</p>
<p>She didn't know what kindness had to do with it. Or perhaps she wasn't seeing clearly enough where all this was headed. Silence again. Catra had put the letters away and was now on her back, eyes closed, one leg dangling in the pool.</p>
<p>"Are you sleeping?" Glimmer prompted, when the air by the pool had grown oppressively torpid.</p>
<p>Long silence. Then her reply came, almost a sigh, without a single muscle moving in her body. "No. I'm thinking."</p>
<p>"About what?"</p>
<p>That skin glistening in the sun— Glimmer could have kissed every inch of it. How many hours had Glimmer spent staring at her? With her eyes closed, Catra couldn't possibly have known what Glimmer was looking at. Her toes flicked the water. "About the Fight Zone. About the letters."</p>
<p>Glimmer already knew the answer, but she still asked. "Want to talk about it?"</p>
<p>"Maybe later, Sparkles." A few minutes passed and then, still with her eyes closed, Catra suddenly broke the stillness once more: "Glimmer."</p>
<p>She liked the way Catra said her name. "Yes?"</p>
<p>"What are you doing?"</p>
<p>"Reading." But she wasn't, really.</p>
<p>"No, you're not." Catra accused her, turning to face the younger girl as her eyes finally opened. There was a smile on her lips.</p>
<p>Glimmer smiled back. "Thinking, then."</p>
<p>"About?"</p>
<p>Glimmer was dying to tell her. "Private," She replied, turning back to her book.</p>
<p>"So you won't tell me?" Catra asked in mock-offense.</p>
<p>"So I won't tell you."</p>
<p>"So she won't tell me," She repeated, pensively, as if explaining to someone about Glimmer.</p>
<p>She loved the way Catra repeated what Glimmer herself had just repeated. Silence was always light and unobtrusive on those afternoons. "I'm not telling."</p>
<p>"Then I'm going back to sleep," Declared, shooting knowing smirk before closing her eyes back again. </p>
<p>Glimmer's heart was racing. Catra must have known. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To Glimmer, those hours spent together at the table in the garden with the large umbrella imperfectly shading Catra's papers, the chinking of their iced lemonades, and in the background, from some neighboring house, the muffled crackle of a medley on perpetual replay—all these are forever impressed on mornings when all she prayed for was for time to stop. </p>
<p>
  <em>'Let summer never end, let her never go away, let the music on perpetual replay play forever, I'm asking for very little, and I swear I'll ask for nothing more.'</em>
</p>
<p>Perhaps the very least she wanted was for Catra to tell her that there was nothing wrong with her, that she was no less human than any other young woman her age. She would have been satisfied and asked for nothing else if Catra picked up the dignity Glimmer had so effortlessly thrown at her feet. </p>
<p>The word "friendship" came to her mind. But friendship was alien, something Glimmer cared nothing for. What she wanted instead, was what all humans ask of one another, what makes life livable. </p>
<p>And it would have to come from Catra first.</p>
<p>One day, while moving her transcriptions on the table, Glimmer accidentally tipped over her glass, it fell on the grass, but didn't break. Catra, who was close by, got up, picked it up, and placed it, not just on the table, but right next to her. Glimmer didn't know where to find the words to thank her.</p>
<p>"You didn't have to," She finally said.</p>
<p>Catra let just enough time go by for it to register that her answer was not casual or carefree. "I wanted to."</p>
<p>'She wanted to', Glimmer thought.</p>
<p>'<em>I wanted to</em>,' She imagined Catra repeating—kind, complaisant, effusive, as she was when the mood would suddenly strike her. </p>
<p>There must be a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughly smitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be smitten as well. Just wait and be hopeful. Glimmer was hopeful, though perhaps that was what she had wanted all along; to wait forever.</p>
<p>As she sat there staring at the glass on her round table, all she wanted was to look up and find Catra still there, suntan lotion, cat ears headband, white bikini, lemonade. To always look up and find her there. </p>
<p>But the day would come soon enough when Glimmer would look up and Catra would no longer be there. </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>By late morning, friends and neighbors from adjoining houses frequently dropped in. Everyone would gather in the garden and then head out together to the beach below. Glimmer's house was the closest to the water, and all one needed was to open the tiny gate, take a narrow stairway, and they were on the rocks. </p>
<p>One day Frosta — a girl who just the previous summer couldn't leave Glimmer alone, but had now blossomed into a teenager who had mastered the art of not always greeting Glimmer whenever they met — dropped in with their friend Perfuma and brought along Scorpia, who stopped by Catra on the grass and said, "Come on, we're going to the beach, you should come."</p>
<p>Catra was willing to oblige. "Let me just put away these papers. Otherwise her mother"—and with her hands carrying papers she used her chin to point at Glimmer—"will skin me alive."</p>
<p>"Talking about skin, come here," Scorpia said, and with her fingers gently and slowly finished applying the sunscreen that hadn't been properly spread across Catra's tanned shoulders. How Glimmer wished she could do that.</p>
<p>Looking over the paperwork, which Catra had left on the large dining table on her way upstairs, Scorpia offered to help her with them whenever Catra needed. As someone who had met plenty of house guests herself, and had gone through a similar process, the silver haired woman did know what to do.</p>
<p>"You've done them before?" Came Catra's voice from upstairs as she rummaged for another bikini in her bedroom, then in the shower, doors slamming, drawers thudding.</p>
<p>"Yes!" Scorpia shouted, looking up into the empty stairwell.</p>
<p>"Well, maybe I'll take you up on that," She said, coming downstairs, flannel red shirt, cat ears headband, red bikini and sunglasses. "If you're really ok with it."</p>
<p>"I'm okay with it." Scorpia beamed.</p>
<p>"Stop flirting and let's go swimming," said Frosta. They all laughed.</p>
<p>Catra had, it took Glimmer a while to realize, four personalities depending on which bikini she was wearing. Knowing which to expect gave her the illusion of a slight advantage. </p>
<p><strong>Red</strong>: bold, set in her ways, very grown-up, almost gruff and ill-tempered— stay away. <strong>Yellow</strong>: sprightly, cheerful, funny, not without barbs— don't give in too easily; might turn to red in no time. <strong>Black</strong>, which she rarely wore: acquiescent, eager to learn, eager to speak, sunny—why wasn't she always like that? <strong>White</strong>: the afternoon she stepped into Glimmer's room from the balcony, the day she massaged her shoulder, the day when she picked up Glimmer's glass and placed it right next to her. </p>
<p>That day was red: she was hasty, determined, snappy.</p>
<p>On their way out, she grabbed an apple from a large bowl of fruit, uttered a 'later' to both Angella and Micah who were sitting in the shade, and, rather than open the gate to the narrow stairway leading to the rocks, jumped over it. None of the summer guests had ever been as freewheeling. But no one minded it, just like no one minded 'Later!'</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>To Glimmer there was always something abrupt about that word. It wasn't "See you later" or "Take care, now." 'Later!' was a chilling, slam-dunk salutation that shoved aside all the honeyed niceties of Bright Moon. 'Later!' always left a sharp aftertaste to what could have been a warm, heart-to-heart moment. 'Later!' didn't close things neatly or allow them to trail off. It slammed them shut.</p>
<p>But 'Later!' was also a way of avoiding saying goodbye, of making light of all goodbyes. Catra said 'Later!' not to mean farewell but to say she'd be back in no time. It was the equivalent of her saying "Just a sec" when Micah once asked her to pass the bread and she was busy pulling apart the fish bones on her plate, "just a sec." </p>
<p>Angella, who hated what she called Catra's 'Fright Zone-isms', ended up accepting them way easier than Glimmer ever would've thought possible. They started as annoying and soon enough became endearing to the older woman. Micah, always the most indulgent among them, but also the most observant, had figured Catra out even sooner, also easily accepting her oddities. </p>
<p>"She's shy, that's why," he said when asked to explain Catra's abrasive 'Later!'</p>
<p>Catra, shy. Glimmer thought it preposterous. Could all of her gruff 'Fright Zone-isms' be nothing more than an exaggerated way of covering up the simple fact that she didn't know—or feared she didn't know— how to take her leave gracefully?</p>
<p>But Glimmer's parents had been truly won over when, one morning, Angella asked her if Catra liked juice in the morning, and she'd said yes. Catra was probably expecting orange or grapefruit juice; what she got was a large glass filled to the rim with thick apricot juice Angella had made it herself. Catra had never had apricot juice in her life. Angella stood facing her, trying to make out her reaction as she quaffed it down. </p>
<p>Catra said nothing at first. Then, probably without thinking, she smacked her lips. She was in heaven. Glimmer's mother couldn't be more pleased. From that day on, a glass of the stuff was waiting for Catra every morning.</p>
<p>She was baffled to know that apricot trees existed in, of all places, Bright Moon's orchard. On late afternoons, when there was nothing to do in the house, Juliet would ask her to climb a ladder with a basket and pick those fruits that were almost 'blushing with shame', she said. </p>
<p>Catra would pick one out, and joke, "Is this one blushing with shame?"</p>
<p>"No," Juliet would say, "That one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age."</p>
<p>Glimmer will never forget watching Catra from her table as she climbed the small ladder wearing her white bikini and jeans shorts, taking forever to pick the ripest apricots. On her way to the kitchen — wicker basket, cat ears headband, flannel shirt, suntan lotion, and all — she threw Glimmer a very large one, saying, "<em>Yours</em>."</p>
<p>'Yours', like 'Later!', had an off-the-cuff, unceremonious, 'here, catch' quality that reminded Glimmer how twisted and secretive her desires were compared to the spontaneity of everything about Catra. The older girl had no idea that what Glimmer had been thinking was that the firm, rounded cheeks of the apricot with their dimple in the middle reminded her of how Catra's body had stretched across the boughs of the tree with her tight, rounded ass. That touching the apricot was like touching her. </p>
<p>Catra would never know that the particular inflection on her face while handing her that apricot or that the tan along her exposed skin would give Glimmer no end of pleasure when she was alone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One morning Glimmer saw Catra sharing a ladder with Perfuma, trying to learn all she could about her grafts, which explained why the apricots in Bright Moon were larger, fleshier, juicier than most apricots in the region. She became fascinated with the grafts, especially when she discovered that Perfuma could spend hours sharing everything she knew about them with anyone who cared to ask. </p>
<p><em>One afternoon</em> and Perfuma was won over.</p>
<p>Even Juliet, who generally didn't care much for the summer house guests was quickly smitten with the girl's surprising talent on cooking and would, on occasion, defer to Catra's opinion— <em>'Do you think I should add onions or sage? Doesn't it taste too lemony now? I ruined it, didn't I? I should have added an extra egg—it's not holding! Should I use the new blender or should I stick to the old mortar and pestle?</em>'</p>
<p>One day when Glimmer stumbled into the kitchen looking for the older girl, she found Catra eating spaghetti and drinking dark red wine with Juliet, the woman trying to teach Catra a Bright Moon drinking song.</p>
<p>She too was won over.</p>
<p>Scorpia, Glimmer could tell, was equally smitten. Frosta as well. Even the crowd of tennis bums who for years had come early every afternoon before heading out to the beach for a late swim would stay much later than usual hoping to catch a quick game with her.</p>
<p>With any of the other summer residents Glimmer would have resented it. But seeing everyone take such a liking to Catra, she found a strange, small oasis of peace.</p>
<p>What could possibly be wrong about liking someone everyone else liked? Everyone had fallen for her, including Glimmer's aunt Castaspella, who stayed with them sometimes on weekends. </p>
<p>Because everyone liked Catra, it was ok for Glimmer to say she liked her too. It was like someone openly declaring someone else irresistible the better to conceal that they were <em>aching</em> to embrace them. </p>
<p>"Oh, I like her very much," Glimmer said when her father asked what she thought of her. What she didn't add was, <em>'I've never wanted someone so much in my life.' </em></p>
<p>She dreaded to think how — if Catra could charm everyone so easily within weeks of arriving in Bright Moon — her life at the Fright Zone was like. </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Then came the night when the tiny motorboat on which Catra had sailed out early that afternoon failed to return and everyone was scrambling to find her friends' telephone numbers in the Fright Zone in case they had to break the terrible news.</p>
<p>On that night Glimmer urged herself to show her grief the way everyone else was showing theirs, so none might suspect she nursed sorrows of a far more secret and more desperate kind—until she realized, almost to her shame, that part of her didn't mind if Catra did die. That there was even something almost exciting in the thought of her body finally showing up on the shore.</p>
<p>Glimmer wanted Catra gone so she could be done with her. She wanted her dead so that if Glimmer couldn't stop thinking about her and worrying about when would be the next time she'd see her, Catra's death would put a definitive end to it. She wanted to kill Catra herself, even, so as to let her know how much her mere existence had come to bother Glimmer, how unbearable her ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in stride, her tireless 'I'm-okay-with-this-and-that', her springing across the gate to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of her bikinis, her heaven, her cheeky 'Later!', her lip-smacking love for apricot juice.</p>
<p>If she didn't kill Catra, then she'd make it so that she'd never go back to the Fright Zone and stay with them instead.</p>
<p>Or maybe she'd kill Scorpia. Glimmer knew what she was up to. At her age, Scorpia's body was more likely to catch Catra's attention, more than Glimmer's, and she was after Catra too, that much was clear. </p>
<p>She knew she had no hold on Catra, nothing to offer, nothing to lure her by. She was nothing. Just a kid. </p>
<p>Yet Glimmer was the first one to spot Catra when she eventually came into the horizon, blurred in the mist, and she was the first one to latch herself on the older girl in a relief hug. It was quick, and not nearly as tight as Glimmer had wanted to hold her, but she was too aware of all the eyes around them. Maybe if she was more like Catra she wouldn't have cared. She would have shrugged them off and held onto Catra for as long as she was allowed to.</p>
<p>They separated, and Catra looked at her, those mismatched eyes almost glowing in the dark as they searched Glimmer's for something they both knew was there. </p>
<p>"You got us worried, kid." Micah ruffled her hair, much to Catra's exasperation</p>
<p>Scorpia was practically in tears, embracing her tightly as if she might've disappeared otherwise. No one batted an eye, Glimmer envied her.</p>
<p>She was convinced that no one in the world, not even Scorpia, wanted Catra as much as she did; nor was anyone willing to go the distance Glimmer was prepared to travel for her. No one had studied every bone in her body, no one lusted after every ripple of muscle, no one knew her like Glimmer did.</p>
<p>Later, when they all had dispersed and gone to bed, Glimmer easily recognized the steps on the balcony. She knew Catra had stopped outside the French windows, debating whether to come in and then after thinking twice, continued walking. </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>It was thanks to the boat incident that Glimmer found out about Catra and Adora.</p>
<p>While looking for information on who to warn in case of a tragedy, Angella had stumbled upon Adora's number. It was marked as her emergency contact, and when asked about it, Catra confirmed they did in fact know each other. The expression of surprise and the quick walls she raised made Glimmer suspect it went a little further than <em>knowing</em> one another. </p>
<p>Often the older girl would get a phone call from the Fright Zone, but Catra liked to keep her telephone conversations extremely short, curt almost. They would hear her utter her unavoidable<em> Later!</em>, and, before they knew it, she would hang up.</p>
<p>She never commented after hanging up. No one ever asked. </p>
<p>Glimmer had heard Adora talk about who she now knew was Catra. How their relationship was complicated, how they were on and off again so much it was hard to keep track, how much they loved each other.</p>
<p>She began listening in as Catra took her phone calls, always trying to keep Catra within her field of vision. Never letting her drift away except when she wasn't around. And when she wasn't around, Glimmer longed for her to remain the exact same person. </p>
<p>
  <em>'Don't let her be someone else when she's away. Don't let her be someone I've never seen before. Don't let her have a life other than the life I know she has with us, with me. Don't let me lose her.'</em>
</p>
<p>She dreaded losing Catra to Adora. Yet thinking of them together did not dismay her. It made her excited, even though she didn't know if what aroused her was Catra, Adora, or the idea of both of them together. </p>
<p>She <strong>liked</strong> thinking of them together. Perhaps seeing how Catra was with someone she clearly had feelings for made Glimmer realize that she was taken, that there was no reason to hope. And this was a good thing, it would help her recovery. Perhaps that was already a sign that recovery was well under way. Glimmer had grazed the forbidden zone, yet been let off easily enough.</p>
<p>But when her heart jolted the next morning when she saw Catra at their usual spot in the garden, Glimmer knew that longing for recovery and actually getting over something -  someone - were two very different things. It didn't change what she still wanted. Did Catra's heart jolt when she saw Glimmer walk into a room?</p>
<p>She doubted it.</p>
<p>Did Catra ignore Glimmer the way Glimmer ignored Catra that morning: on purpose, to draw Glimmer out, to protect herself, to show Glimmer was nothing to her? Or was Catra oblivious, the way sometimes the most perceptive individuals fail to pick up the most obvious cues because they're simply not paying attention, not tempted, not interested?</p>
<p>Listening in the older girl's phone calls she heard hushed promises of <em>'I'll be back soon'.</em></p>
<p>When had it started? And how was it that Glimmer hadn't been told? Why hadn't she known? Surely the signs were all around. Why didn't Glimmer see them? She began thinking of nothing but what they might do when they were back together in the Fright Zone. </p>
<p>She began to say nice things about Adora, pretending she had no inkling where things stood between them. Catra thought she was being coy. "What's it to you anyway?" Asked, derision crackling in her voice.</p>
<p>"She's probably even more beautiful now than she was last year." Glimmer then complimented Adora's naked body, which she'd seen the year before during a night swim. She wanted Catra aroused.</p>
<p>"Are you trying to make me like her?" Inquired</p>
<p>"What would the harm be in that?"</p>
<p>"No harm, except I like to go it alone." Replied, the familiar cold expression almost bringing Glimmer to tears. "Don't play at being the good host." Warned.</p>
<p>It took Glimmer a while to understand what she was really after. Not just to get Catra aroused, but in urging her to speak about Adora behind her back, Glimmer wanted to turn Adora into the object of gossip. It would allow them to warm up to one another through her, to bridge the gap between them. Or perhaps Glimmer just wanted Catra to know she liked girls.</p>
<p>"Just don't."</p>
<p>Her rebuke told Glimmer that Catra wasn't going to play her game. It put Glimmer in her place, pushing her agony and shame up a few notches. But over and above the shame of desiring her, Glimmer now respected and feared Catra.</p>
<p>And hated her for making her hate herself. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The morning after their discussion about Adora, Glimmer made no motions to go jogging with Catra. Neither did she. When Glimmer eventually brought up jogging, because the silence on the matter had become unbearable, Catra said she'd already gone. "You're a late riser these days."</p><p><strong>Clever</strong>, Glimmer thought.</p><p>Indeed, Glimmer had become so used to finding Catra waiting for her that she'd grown bold and didn't worry too much about when she got up. That would teach her. The next morning, though Glimmer wanted to swim with her, coming downstairs would have looked like a chastened response to a casual chiding. So, she stayed in her room, just to prove a point. Glimmer heard Catra step lightly across the balcony, on tiptoes almost. She was avoiding her too. </p><p>Glimmer came downstairs much later, by then Catra had already left. They stopped talking.</p><p>Even when they shared the same spot in the morning, talk was at best idle. It couldn't even be called chitchat. It didn't upset Catra. She probably hadn't given it another thought.</p><p>How is it that some people go through hell trying to get close to someone, while that person doesn't have the haziest notion and won't even give them a thought when two weeks go by and they haven't so much as exchanged a single word? Did Catra have any idea? Should Glimmer let her know?</p><p>Then Catra began to neglect volleyball and took up bike rides with Scorpia and her friends in the late afternoons instead. Once, when there was one too many of them to go biking, Catra turned to Glimmer and asked if she minded letting Frosta borrow her bike since she wasn't using it. It threw Glimmer back to age six.</p><p>She shrugged her shoulders, meaning, 'Go ahead, I couldn't care less.' But no sooner had they left than Glimmer scrambled upstairs and began sobbing into her pillow.</p><p>At night sometimes everyone would meet at a dance club. There was never any telling when Catra would show up. She just bounded onto the scene, and just as suddenly disappeared, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. </p><p>Sometimes Scorpia would come to their home, she would sit in the garden and stare out, basically waiting for Catra to show up. Then, when the minutes wore on and there was nothing much to say between her and Glimmer, she'd finally ask, "So, where's Catra?" </p><p>"She's in town." Or: "She's in the library with my dad." Or: "She's down somewhere at the beach."</p><p>"Well, I'm leaving, then. Please, tell her I came by."</p><p>'<em>It's over</em>', Glimmer thought.</p><p>Juliet shook her head with a look of compassionate rebuke. "Scorpia is a sweetheart, but Catra is already taken. Doesn't she know about Adora?"</p><p>Glimmer could just see Juliet inspecting Catra's sheets every morning. Or comparing notes with Scorpia's housemaid. No secret could escape their network of informed housekeepers.</p><p>Glimmer knew Scorpia was in pain. Everyone suspected something was going on between them, but word had also quickly gotten around about Catra and Adora. Glimmer wondered if Scorpia had gotten any information from the closed off brunette.</p><p>She doubted it.</p><p>--</p><p>Sometimes Glimmer would run into them in town.</p><p>Once while sitting at the café where several people would gather at night after the movies or before heading to the disco, Glimmer saw them walking out of a side alley together, talking. Catra was eating ice cream, while Scorpia was hanging on her free arm with both of hers. When had they found the time to become so intimate? Their conversation seemed serious.</p><p>"What are you doing here?" Catra said when she spotted Glimmer. Banter was both how she took cover and tried to conceal they'd altogether stopped talking. A cheap ploy, Glimmer thought.</p><p>"Hanging out with my friends." The pink haired girl shrugged</p><p>"Isn't it past your bedtime?"</p><p>"My father doesn't believe in bedtimes," She parried.</p><p>Scorpia was still deep in thought. She was avoiding Glimmer's eyes, seemingly upset. Did she mind the sudden intrusion into their little world? Was this about something else? Something Catra had said to her?</p><p>A smirk hovered on Catra's face; she was about to say something cruel. "Never a bedtime in your house, no rules, no supervision, nothing. It must be nice, to have nothing to rebel against."</p><p>"I suppose," Glimmer answered, trying to make light of it before it went any further. "But we all have our reasons for rebelling."</p><p>"We do?" Catra asked, softening</p><p>"Name one way you rebel," chimed in Scorpia.</p><p>"You wouldn't understand."</p><p>"She stays home," Catra broke in, trying to change the subject but also perhaps to come to Glimmer's rescue. Was she trying to apologize to Glimmer after the jabs, or was this the beginnings of yet another joke at her expense? A steely, neutral glance sat on Catra's face, there was no hint of mischief in her eyes. Whose side was she on?</p><p>"So?" Scorpia blinked.</p><p>"Let's go," Catra spoke, final, and threw Glimmer a casual 'Later!' </p><p>Glimmer watched them look for an empty table at one of the adjoining cafes. Her friends asked her if Catra was hitting on Scorpia. "I don't know," replied. They asked if they were already a thing. "Don't know that either."</p><p>"I'd love to be in Catra's shoes." Perfuma sighed</p><p>But Glimmer was in heaven. The fact that Catra hadn't forgotten their trip to the movie theater gave her a shot of tonic she hadn't experienced in many, many days. It spilled over everything she touched. Just a word, a gaze, and she was in heaven.</p><p>It never occurred to Glimmer that if one word from Catra could make her so happy, another could just as easily crush her, that if she didn't want to be unhappy, Glimmer should learn to beware of such small joys as well. </p><p>--</p><p>"We aren't a thing," Catra told Perfuma the next morning as they were once again discussing grafts. "Scorpia and I."</p><p>Glimmer couldn't even pretend she wasn't hanging onto every word as she sat nearby.</p><p>"And why are you telling me?" asked the blonde, the hint of jealousy from the night before was completely gone.</p><p>"You know why." Catra said, smugness dripping off of her words. "You should tell her."</p><p>Glimmer gripped her transcriptions tightly. "Better to have tried and failed..." She knew she was coming off half mocking and half comforting. </p><p>"I have tried, but I don't think she's interested."</p><p>"She just didn't get it," insisted Catra. "Try again later." That was what people who were okay with themselves did. But Glimmer could also sense Catra was onto something and wasn't coming out with it, perhaps because there was something mildly disquieting behind the way her eyes met with Glimmer's as she spoke her well-intentioned 'try again later', as if it hadn't been aimed at Perfuma .</p><p>Catra was criticizing Glimmer. Or making fun of her. Or seeing through her. </p><p>Because only someone who had completely figured Glimmer out would have said it. "If not later, <em>when</em>?"</p><p>Perfuma liked it. "If not later, when?"</p><p>Catra instantly continued. "I would definitely try again later. And again after that." </p><p>Glimmer repeated the phrase as if it were a prophetic mantra meant to reflect how Catra lived her life and how she was attempting to live her own. As if by repeating the words that had come straight from Catra's mouth, Glimmer might trip on a secret passageway to a truth that had eluded her.</p><p>'Try again later' were the last words Glimmer would speak to herself every night when she'd swear to do something to bring Catra closer. Try again later meant, 'I haven't the courage now. Things aren't ready just yet.'</p><p>Where she'd find the will and the courage to try again later, she didn't know. But resolving to do something rather than sit passively made Glimmer feel that she was already doing something.</p><p>But she also knew that she was circling wagons around her life with 'try again later's, and that months, seasons, entire years, a lifetime could go by with nothing but 'Try again later' stamped on every day. 

'Try again later' worked for people like Catra. </p><p>
  <em>If not later, when?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If not later, when? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>If not later, when? </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Knowing Scorpia and Catra weren't an item <strong>did</strong> surprise her, but what truly sent Glimmer into a total tailspin was talking to Catra a few mornings later in the garden and finding, not only that she was turning a deaf ear to all of Glimmer's blandishments on behalf of Adora, but that she was on the '<em>wrong track</em>'. </p>
<p>"What do you mean, wrong track?" Glimmer asked</p>
<p>"I'm not interested." She didn't know if Catra meant not interested in discussing it, or not interested in Adora.</p>
<p>"<em>Everyone</em> is interested." </p>
<p>"Well, maybe. But not me." Still unclear. There was something at once dry, irked, and fussy in her voice.</p>
<p>"But I heard you two on the phone."</p>
<p>"What you heard was not your business to hear. Anyway, I'm not playing this game with either her or you." She sucked on her cigarette and looking back at Glimmer gave her the usual menacing, chilly gaze. </p>
<p>Glimmer shrugged her shoulders. "Look, I'm sorry" — and went back to her books. She had overstepped her bounds again and there was no getting out of it gracefully except by owning that she'd been terribly indiscreet.</p>
<p>"Maybe you should try," Catra threw in. Glimmer had never heard her speak in that careful tone before. </p>
<p>"She wouldn't want to have anything to do with me."</p>
<p>"Would you <em>want</em> her to?" Where was the conversation going, and why did Glimmer feel that a trap lay a few steps ahead?</p>
<p>"No?" She replied gingerly, not realizing that her diffidence had made the "no" sound like a question.</p>
<p>"Are you sure?" Had Glimmer, by any chance, convinced Catra that she'd wanted Adora all along? </p>
<p>Glimmer looked up at her as though to return challenge for challenge. "What would <em>you</em> know?"</p>
<p>"I know you like her." Catra accused her. She didn't sound angry, or smug, or even sad, having spoken with the same emotion one would use talking about the weather.</p>
<p>"You have no idea what I like," Glimmer snapped. "No idea."</p>
<p>She was trying to sound arch and mysterious, but she had only managed to sound peevish and hysterical.</p>
<p>In the end, she was happier if Catra thought she wanted Adora than if she pushed the issue further and had Glimmer tripping all over herself. Speechless, Glimmer would have admitted things she hadn't mapped out for herself and didn't know how to admit. </p>
<p>Speechless, she would have gotten to where her body longed to go. She would have blushed, and blushed because she had blushed, fuddled with words and ultimately broken down — and then where would she be? What would Catra say? </p>
<p>'Is it better to break down now?' Glimmer thought, 'Than live another day juggling all of the implausible resolutions to <em>try again later</em>?' </p>
<p>No, better Catra should never know.</p>
<p>Glimmer could live with that. She could always, <strong>always</strong> live with that. It didn't even surprise her to see how easy it was to accept. </p>
<p>Catra should <strong>never</strong> know.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between them that the words Glimmer longed to tell Catra would almost slip out of her mouth. 'Black bikini moments', Glimmer called them—even after her color theory was entirely disproved and gave her no confidence to expect kindness on 'white' days or to watch out for 'red' days.</p>
<p>Music was an easy subject for them to discuss, especially when one of them was at the piano. Or when Glimmer would want her to play something in the manner of so-and-so. She liked Catra's combinations of two, three, even four composers chiming in on the same piece, or things transcribed by Glimmer herself.</p>
<p>One day Scorpia started to hum a hit-parade tune and suddenly, because it was a windy day and no one was heading for the beach or even staying outdoors, their friends gathered around the piano in the living room as Catra improvised a Brahms variation on a Mozart rendition of that very same song. "How do you do this?" Glimmer asked Catra one morning while she lay in heaven.</p>
<p>"Sometimes the only way to understand an artist is to wear their shoes, to get inside them. Then everything else flows naturally." Catra replied without a second thought.</p>
<p>Get inside them. She wondered if she could finally understand Catra if she got inside of her. Wondered what secrets Catra might've unveiled if she got inside Glimmer.</p>
<p>They talked about books, history, about Bright Moon and the Fright Zone.</p>
<p>When Glimmer thinks back to that summer, she can never sort the sequence of events. There are a few key scenes. Otherwise, all she remembers are the "repeat" moments. The morning ritual before and after breakfast: Catra lying on the grass, or by the pool, Glimmer sitting at the table. Then the swim or the jog. Then Catra grabbing a bicycle and riding to town. Lunch at the dining table in the other garden, or lunch indoors, always a guest or two. The afternoon hours, splendid and lush with abundant sun and silence.</p>
<p>Then there are the leftover scenes: her mother always wondering what Glimmer did with her time, why she was always alone; her father urging Glimmer to make new friends if the old ones didn't interest her, but above all to stop hanging around the house all the time— both of them begging her to play more tennis, go dancing more often, get to know people, find out for herself why others are so necessary in life.</p>
<p><em>Do crazy things if you must</em>, they told her, forever prying to unearth the mysterious, telltale signs of heartbreak which, in their clumsy, intrusive, devoted way, both would instantly wish to heal, as if Glimmer were a soldier who needed her wound immediately stanched or else she'd die. </p>
<p>"You can always talk to me. I was your age once," Her mother used to say. "The things you feel and think only you have felt, believe me, I've lived and suffered through all of them, and more than once — some I've never gotten over and others I'm as ignorant about as you are today, yet I know almost every bend, every toll-booth, every chamber in the human heart."</p>
<p>There are other scenes: the silence—some of them napping, some working, others reading, the whole world basking away in hushed semitones. Heavenly hours when voices from the world beyond the house would filter in so softly that Glimmer was sure she had drifted off. Then afternoon volleyball. Shower and cocktails. Waiting for dinner. Guests again. Dinner. Strolling into town and back late at night, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.</p>
<p>Then there are the exceptions: the stormy afternoon when they sat in the living room, listening to the music and to the hail pelting every window in the house. The lights would go out, the music would die, and all they had was each other's faces. Her aunt twittering away about her dreadful years at the Fright Zone, her mother trailing the scent of tea, and in the background, all the way from the kitchen downstairs, Juliet singing. In the rain, the lean, cloaked, hooded figure of Perfuma battling with the elements, always pulling up weeds even in the rain, Micah signaling with his arms from the living room window, "Go back, Perfuma, go back."</p>
<p>But all of these hours were strained by fear. Glimmer didn't know what she was afraid of, nor why she worried so much, nor why this thing that could so easily cause panic felt like hope sometimes and, like hope, brought joy, unreal joy, joy with a noose tied around it. </p>
<p>The thud her heart gave when she saw Catra unannounced both terrified and thrilled her. She was afraid when Catra showed up, afraid when she failed to, afraid when Catra looked at her, more frightened yet when she didn't. </p>
<p>The fear never went away. Glimmer woke up to it, watched it turn to joy when she heard Catra shower in the morning and knew she'd be downstairs with them for breakfast, only to watch it curdle when, rather than have coffee, she would dash through the house and right away set to work in the garden. By noon, the agony of waiting to hear Catra say anything to her was more than she could bear. It made her hate herself for feeling so thoroughly invisible, so smitten, so callow.</p>
<p>
  <em>'Just say something, just touch me, Catra. Look at me long enough and watch the tears well in my eyes. Knock at my door at night and see if I haven't already left it ajar for you. Walk inside. There's always room in my bed.'</em>
</p>
<p>What she feared most were the days when she didn't see Catra for stretches at a time — entire afternoons and evenings without knowing where she'd been. Her parents, her father especially, couldn't have been happier with Catra. She was working out better than most of the summer residents, she could do no wrong. And what she did in her private life and her time was her business. So they never paid any attention to her absences.</p>
<p>Glimmer thought it was best never to show that they caused her any anxiety, never to let her fears be known. She mentioned Catra's absences only when someone else wondered where she'd been; Glimmer would pretend to look as startled as they were. </p>
<p>"Oh, that's right, she's been gone so long. No, no idea." And she had to worry not to look too startled either, for that might ring false and alert them to what was eating at her. They'd know bad faith as soon as they spotted it. Glimmer was surprised they hadn't already. </p>
<p>Her parents had always said Glimmer got too easily attached to people. That summer, though, she finally realized what they meant by being 'too easily attached'. Obviously, it had happened before, and they must have already picked up on it when she was probably too young to notice anything herself. It had sent alarming ripples through their lives, they worried for their daughter. </p>
<p>Glimmer knew they were right to worry. </p>
<p>She just hoped they'd never know how far things stood beyond their ordinary worries. She knew they didn't suspect a thing, and it bothered her — though she wouldn't have wanted it otherwise. She was safe from them, and from Catra—but at what price, and did she <strong>want</strong> to be so safe from anyone?</p>
<p>There was no one to speak to. </p>
<p>Whom could she tell? Juliet? She'd lecture her. Her aunt? She'd probably tell everyone. Her friends? They'd make fun of her in a second. Her cousins when they came? Never. Her father held the most liberal views — but would this apply to his own daughter? Who else? Write to one of her teachers? See a doctor? Say she needed a shrink? Tell Catra?</p>
<p>
  <em>Tell Catra...</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>There is no one else to tell, Catra, so I'm afraid it's going to have to be you...</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Glim's almost reaching her boiling point, folks. We're getting a confession very very soon.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Towards the end of July things finally came to a head.</p>
<p>While reading in her father's library one evening, Glimmer came upon the story of a handsome young knight who is madly in love with a princess. She too is in love with him, though she seems not to be entirely aware of it. And despite the friendship that blossoms between them, or perhaps because of that very friendship, he finds himself so humbled and speechless, totally unable to bring up the subject of his love. </p>
<p>Until one day he asks her point-blank: <em>"Is it better to speak or die?"</em></p>
<p>Glimmer didn't think she'd ever have the courage to ask such a question.</p>
<p>Then came the day. They were in the garden, and Glimmer told Catra of the novella she had just finished reading. "About the knight who doesn't know whether to speak or die. You told me already." </p>
<p>Obviously Glimmer had mentioned it and forgotten. "Yes."</p>
<p>"Well, does he or doesn't he?" Catra deadpanned, not bothering to look up from her own papers.</p>
<p>"Better to speak, she said. But she's on her guard. She senses a trap somewhere."</p>
<p>The brunette finally turned to Glimmer. Her eyes were serious, not as if Glimmer was speaking about a random book she'd read, but about something that actually mattered and affected her personally. "Does he speak?"</p>
<p>"No, he fudges." Swallowed, feeling herself scrutinized under the piercing gaze</p>
<p>A scoff, both the tension and the seriousness dissipating. "Figures." It was just after breakfast. Neither of them felt like working that day. "Listen, I need to pick up something in town."</p>
<p>"I'll go, if you want me to." Glimmer offered</p>
<p>Catra sat silently a moment. "No, let's go together."</p>
<p>"Now?" What she meant was,<em> 'Really?'</em></p>
<p>"Why, have you got anything better to do?" Came the teasing response </p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"So let's go." Putting some pages in her frayed green backpack, she slung it over her shoulders. </p>
<p>It had been ages since Catra had asked Glimmer to go anywhere with her. Glimmer put down her fountain pen, closed her scorebook, placed a half-full glass of lemonade on top of her pages, and was ready to go. </p>
<p>Once they had reached the cypress lane that led onto the main road to town, she asked Catra, "Did Perfuma speak?"</p>
<p>"Speak?" Catra blinked </p>
<p>"To Scorpia." Clarified</p>
<p>"Yeah, she did." Grinned, "They're a thing now, both of them are beyond thankful to me. No fumbles."</p>
<p>Glimmer envied them.</p>
<p>"I fell the other day on my way back and scraped myself pretty badly. Perfuma insisted on applying some sort of witch's brew." With one hand on the handlebar she lifted her shirt and exposed a huge scrape and bruise on her left hip. "She said it was a way of thanking me."</p>
<p>"She probably would've given it to you regardless," Glimmer said. Her eyes fell on the wound. She would have touched, caressed, worshipped that scrape.</p>
<p>On their way, she noticed that Catra was taking her time. She wasn't in her usual rush, no speeding, no scaling the hill with her usual athletic zeal. Nor did she seem in a rush to go back to her paperwork, or join her friends on the beach, or, as was usually the case, ditch Glimmer. </p>
<p>Perhaps she had nothing better to do. This was Glimmer's moment in heaven, she knew it wouldn't last and that she should at least enjoy it for as long as she could. </p>
<p>When they arrived at the square overlooking the sea, Catra stopped to buy cigarettes. She smoked a brand Glimmer hadn't even heard of, but knew, by the packaging, that it was from the Fright Zone. She asked if she could take one. Catra took it out from the box, cupped her hands very near Glimmer's face, and lit the cigarette. "Not bad, right?" </p>
<p>"Not bad at all." They'd remind her of Catra, of that day, and it was when she realized that in less than a month she'd be totally gone, without a trace. That was the first time Glimmer allowed herself to count Catra's remaining days in Bright Moon.</p>
<p>"Just take a look at this," The older girl said, motioning to the midmorning sun and the edge of the square overlooking the rolling hills below. Farther out and way below was a magnificent view of the sea. "You do know who is said to have drowned near here"</p>
<p>"Mara."<br/>
 <br/>
"And do you know what her wife Razz and friends did when they found her body?"</p>
<p>"Cor cordium, heart of hearts," Glimmer replied, referring to the moment when Razz had seized Mara's heart before the flames had totally engulfed her body as it was being cremated on the shore. Razz had kept it ever since. Why was Catra quizzing her?</p>
<p>"Is there anything you don't know?"</p>
<p>Glimmer looked at her, that was the moment. </p>
<p>She could seize it or lose it, but either way she would never live it down. Or Glimmer could gloat over Catra's compliment—but live to regret everything else. That was probably the first time in her life in which she spoke without planning some of what she was about to say. She was too nervous to plan anything. </p>
<p>She laughed weakly and put away her cigarette. "I know nothing, Catra."</p>
<p>"You know more than anyone around here." Why was she returning Glimmer's near-tragic tone with bland ego-boosting?</p>
<p>"If you only knew how little I know about the things that really matter."</p>
<p>It was like treading water, trying neither to drown nor to swim to safety, just staying in place, there was the truth — even if Glimmer couldn't speak the truth, or even hint at it, she could swear it lay around them. She was giving Catra every chance to put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity.</p>
<p>Catra understood, she must have suspected, standing there, watching Glimmer from across a parallel lane with her steely, hostile, cutting, all-knowing gaze. Perhaps she was trying not to seem taken aback.</p>
<p>"What things that matter?"</p>
<p>Was she being disingenuous?</p>
<p>"You know what things." Glimmer stood her ground. "By now you of all people should know."</p>
<p>Silence. </p>
<p>"Why are you telling me this?"</p>
<p>Glimmer paused. "Because I thought you should know."</p>
<p>"Because you thought I should know." She repeated the words slowly, trying to take in their full meaning, all the while sorting them out, playing for time by repeating the words.  </p>
<p>"Because I <strong>want</strong> you to know," The younger girl blurted out. "Because there is no one else I can say it to but you."</p>
<p>There, she had said it. Was she making any sense?</p>
<p>Glimmer was about to interrupt and sidetrack the conversation by saying something about the sea and the weather tomorrow, but to her credit Catra didn't let her loose. "Do you know what you're saying?"</p>
<p>This time Glimmer looked out to the sea and, with a vague and weary tone that was her last diversion, her last cover, her last getaway, said, "Yes, I know what I'm saying and you're not mistaking any of it. I'm just not very good at speaking."</p>
<p>"So you're saying what I think you're saying?" </p>
<p>"Yes." Now that she had spilled the beans, she felt like a felon, who'd surrendered to the police and confessed yet once more to yet one more police officer how he robbed the store.</p>
<p>Catra turned away, eyes falling to the building in front on them. "Wait for me here, I have to run upstairs and get some papers. Don't go away."</p>
<p>Glimmer looked at her with a confiding smile. "You know very well I'm not going anywhere."</p>
<p><em>If that's not another admission, then what is?</em> She thought. </p>
<p>As she waited, Glimmer took both their bikes and walked them toward the war memorial dedicated to the youth of the town who'd perished in battle defending Bright Moon. Every once major Kingdom had a similar memorial. </p>
<p>Around the small square, the old folk, men mostly, sat on small, straw-backed chairs or on park benches. She wondered how many people there still remembered the young men they'd lost on the Rebellion Wars. You'd have to be at least eighty years old to have known them. And at least one hundred, if not more, to have been older than they were then. </p>
<p>At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end? At one hundred, siblings forget, sons forget, loved ones forget, no one remembers anything, even the most devastated forget to remember. Mothers and fathers have long since died. Does anyone remember? </p>
<p>A thought raced through Glimmer's mind: <em>Will my descendants know what was spoken on this very square today? Will anyone? Or will it dissolve into thin air, as part of me wishes it would? Will they know how close to the brink their fate stood on this day on this square? </em></p>
<p>The thought amused her and gave her the necessary distance to face the remainder of that day.</p>
<p>
  <em>In thirty, forty years, I'll come back here and think back on a conversation I knew I'd never forget, much as I might want to someday. I'll come here with my partner, my children, show them the sights, point to the bay. Then I'll stand here and ask the statue and the straw-backed chairs and shaky wooden tables to remind me of someone called Catra.</em>
</p>
<p>When Catra returned, the first thing she blurted out was, "That idiot mixed the pages and gave me the wrong form to fill. So I have to re-do the whole thing."</p>
<p>It was her turn to look for excuses to dodge the subject. Glimmer could easily let her off the hook if she wanted. They could talk about the sea, the square, or about the statue. And if not these, there was the trip to Mystacor they'd been discussing for days now.</p>
<p>"I wish I hadn't spoken," Glimmer finally said. She knew as soon as she'd said it that she'd broken the spell between them.</p>
<p>"I'm going to pretend you never did."</p>
<p>That was an approach Glimmer would never expected from a woman who was so okay with the world. "Does this mean we're on speaking terms—but not really?"</p>
<p>Catra thought about it. "Look, we can't talk about such things. We really can't." </p>
<p>She slung her bag around her and they were off downhill.</p>
<p>Before, Glimmer was in total agony, every nerve ending, every emotion bruised, trampled, crushed, all of it pulverized till she couldn't tell fear from anger or desire. But at that time there was something to look forward to. Now that she had laid her cards on the table, the secrecy, the shame was gone, but with them so was that dash of unspoken hope that had kept everything alive those weeks.</p>
<p>Only the scenery and the weather could buoy her spirits. As would the ride together on the empty country road, which was entirely theirs at that time of day and where the sun started pounding exposed patches along the route. </p>
<p>"Come with me, I'll show you a spot most tourists and strangers have never seen." Glimmer then added, not wishing to be pushy. "If you have time." </p>
<p>"I have time." It was spoken with a noncommittal tone in her voice, as though that was a small concession to make up for not discussing the matter at hand. </p>
<p>They veered off the main road and headed toward the edge of the cliff.<br/>
 <br/>
Tiny, stunted palm trees and gnarled olive trees studded the copse. Then through the trees, on an incline leading toward the very edge of the cliff, was a knoll partly shaded by tall marine pines. Glimmer leaned her bike against one of the trees, Catra did the same. "Now take a look," The younger girl said, extremely pleased.</p>
<p>A soundless, quiet cove stood straight below them. Not a sign of civilization anywhere, no home, no jetty, no fishing boats. Farther out, as always, were the tower ruins of the old castle, and, if you strained your eyes, the outline of Mystacor, and farther still was something that looked like their house and the adjoining villas, the one where Perfuma and Scorpia lived.</p>
<p>"This is my spot. All mine. I come here to read. I can't tell you the number of books I've read here."</p>
<p>"Do you like being alone?" Catra asked.</p>
<p>"No. No one likes being alone. But I've learned how to live with it."</p>
<p>"Are you always so very wise?" She asked. </p>
<p>Was she about to lecture her on Glimmer needing to get out more, make more friends, and, having made friends, not to be so selfish with them? Or was this Catra fulfilling her role as shrink/part-time-friend-of-the-family? Or was Glimmer yet again misreading her completely?</p>
<p>"I'm not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together—it doesn't mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me." Shrugged</p>
<p>"But you're doing it now—in a way." </p>
<p>"Yes, in a way—that's how I always say things: in a way."</p>
<p>Staring out at the offing so as not to look at Catra, Glimmer sat down on the grass and noticed the older girl was crouching a few yards away from her on the tips of her toes, as though she would at any moment spring to her feet and go back to where they'd left their bicycles.</p>
<p>It never occurred to Glimmer that she had brought her there not just to show Catra her little world, but to ask her little world to let Catra in, so that the place where she came to be alone on summer afternoons would get to know her, judge her, see if she fitted in, take her in, so that Glimmer could come back there and remember. </p>
<p>"I like the way you say things... Why are you always putting yourself down?" </p>
<p>Glimmer shrugged her shoulders once again. Was Catra criticizing her for criticizing herself? "I don't know. So you won't, I suppose." </p>
<p>"Are you so scared of what others think?" </p>
<p>Glimmer shook her head, but didn't know the answer. Or perhaps the answer was so obvious that she didn't need to answer. It was moments such as those that left her feeling so vulnerable, so naked. She had nothing to say in reply, and wasn't moving either.</p>
<p>Catra was waiting for her to say something. She was staring at Glimmer.</p>
<p>That was the first time Glimmer dared herself to stare back at Catra. Usually, she'd cast a glance and then look away—look away because she didn't want to swim in the lovely, dangerous pool of Catra's eyes unless she'd been invited to—and she never waited long enough to know whether she was wanted there.</p>
<p>Look away because she was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because she didn't want to give anything away; look away because she couldn't acknowledge how much Catra mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of hers always reminded Glimmer of how far below her she ranked. </p>
<p>Then, in the silence of the moment, Glimmer stared back, not to defy Catra, or to show she wasn't shy any longer, but to surrender, to tell her <em>'this is who I am, this is who you are, this is what I <strong>want</strong>. There is nothing but truth between us now, and if nothing comes of this, let it never be said that either of us was unaware of what might happen.' </em></p>
<p>She was hopeless. And she stared back because there wasn't a thing to lose anymore. She stared back with the all-knowing, I-dare-you-to-kiss-me gaze of someone who both challenges and flees with one and the same gesture.</p>
<p>"You're making things very difficult for me."</p>
<p>Was she by any chance referring to the staring?</p>
<p>Glimmer didn't back down. Neither did Catra. Yes, she was referring to the staring. </p>
<p>"Why am I making things difficult?" Her heart was beating too fast for her to speak coherently. She wasn't even ashamed of showing how flushed she was. </p>
<p><em>Let her know, let her</em>.</p>
<p>"Because it would be wrong."</p>
<p>"Would?" Glimmer asked. Was there a ray of hope, then? Catra sat down on the grass, then lay down on her back, her arms under her head, as she stared at the sky.</p>
<p>"Yes, would. I'm not going to pretend this hasn't crossed my mind."</p>
<p>"I'd be the last to know."</p>
<p>"Well, it has." Catra hissed. "There! What did you <strong>think</strong> was going on?"</p>
<p>"Going on?" Glimmer fumbled by way of a question. "Nothing." She thought about it some more. "Nothing," Repeated. "Nothing."</p>
<p>"I see," Catra finally said. "You've got it all wrong, Sparkles"— chiding condescension in her voice. "If it makes you feel any better, I've had to hold back. It's time you learned, too."</p>
<p>"The best I can do is pretend I don't care."</p>
<p>"That much we've known for a while already," She snapped right away.</p>
<p>Glimmer was crushed. All those times when she thought she was showing how easy it was to ignore Catra in the garden, on the balcony, at the beach, she had been seeing right through her.</p>
<p>Catra's admission drowned her budding hopes. Where would they go from there? What was there to add? And what would happen the next time they pretended not to speak?</p>
<p>"You're the luckiest kid in the world." Catra grunted.</p>
<p>"You don't know the half of it." Then, perhaps to fill the silence that was becoming unbearable, she blurted out, "So much of it is wrong, though."</p>
<p>"What? Your family?" Scoffed</p>
<p>"That, too."</p>
<p>"Living here all summer long, reading by yourself, meeting all those people?" She was making fun of Glimmer again. Catra paused a moment. "... <strong>Us</strong>, you mean." </p>
<p>Glimmer did not reply. </p>
<p>"Let's see, then—" And before she knew it, Catra sidled up to her. </p>
<p>They were too close, Glimmer thought. She'd never been so close to Catra except in dreams.</p>
<p>Catra stared her right in the face, as though she liked it and wished to study it and to linger on it, then she touched Glimmer's lips with her finger and let it travel left and right and right and left again and again as the younger girl lay there, watching Catra smile in a way that made her fear that there'd be no turning back from that, that there it was her chance to say no or to say something — except that she didn't have any time left, because Catra brought her lips to Glimmer's mouth, a warm, conciliatory, I'll-meet-you-halfway-but-no-further kiss. </p>
<p>"Better now?" Catra asked afterward. </p>
<p>Glimmer did not answer but lifted her face to Catra's and kissed her again, almost savagely, not because she was filled with passion, but because she was not sure their kiss had convinced her of anything about herself. Glimmer wasn't even sure she had enjoyed it as much as she'd expected and needed to test it again, needed to test the test. </p>
<p>
  <em>Denial. </em>
</p>
<p>She squelched her doubts with a yet more violent kiss. Glimmer did not want passion, she did not want pleasure. Perhaps she didn't even want proof. And she did not want words, small talk, big talk, bike talk, book talk, any of it. Just the sun, the grass, the occasional sea breeze, and the smell of Catra's fresh from her body. </p>
<p>Glimmer did not know where it all was leading, but she knew she was surrendering to Catra, inch by inch, and Catra must have known it. Glimmer sensed she was still keeping a distance between them. She knew that anything she did, any movement, might disturb the harmony of the moment. </p>
<p>So, sensing there was probably not going to be a sequel to the kiss, she began to test the eventual separation of their mouths, only to realize how much she didn't want it to stop. When, finally, Glimmer lifted one knee and moved it toward Catra to face her, she knew she had broken the spell.</p>
<p>"I think we should go."</p>
<p>"Not yet." Glimmer pleaded, trying - and failing - to keep their bodies close </p>
<p>"We can't do this. I know myself." Catra pulled away. "So far we've behaved. We've been good. Neither of us has done anything to feel ashamed of. Let's keep it that way."</p>
<p>"Why? I don't care." In a desperate move which she knew she'd never live down, Glimmer reached forward and let her hand rest on Catra's thigh. "Who is to know?"</p>
<p>She did not move. The idea of pushing further and letting her hand travel was cut short as Catra, probably having read the intention and, with total composure, brought her hand there and let it rest on Glimmer's for a second before lifting their hands, a gesture that was very gentle but also quite glacial. A moment of unbearable silence settled between them.</p>
<p>"Did I offend you?"</p>
<p>"Just don't."</p>
<p>It sounded a bit like 'Later!', when Glimmer had first heard it weeks earlier—biting and blunted, and altogether mirthless, without any inflection of either the joy or the passion they'd just shared. Catra offered her hand and helped Glimmer stand up again, suddenly wincing. </p>
<p>Glimmer remembered the scrape. "We'll stop by the pharmacist on the way back."</p>
<p>Catra didn't reply. That was about the most sobering thing any of them could have said. It let the intrusive real world gust into that moment— the scrape, Perfuma, the thing with Scorpia, the music score hastily left under a glass of lemonade, how long ago they all seemed.</p>
<p>"We'll never speak again," Glimmer said as they glided down the never-ending slope, riding away from her spot.</p>
<p>"Don't say that."</p>
<p>"I just know it. We'll chitchat. Chitchat, chitchat. That's all..." It must have been nearing noon. "And the funny thing is, I can live with that." </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two hours later, at lunch, Glimmer gave herself all the proof she needed that she would <strong>never</strong> be able to live with that.</p><p>Before dessert, while Juliet was clearing away the plates and while everyone's attention was focused on conversation, she felt a warm, bare foot casually brush her own.</p><p>It made Glimmer remember that, on the berm, she should have seized her chance to feel as much of Catra's skin as she could. Now that was all the chance she'd ever get.</p><p>It withdrew, not immediately, but soon enough, as though it had waited an appropriate interval of time. Glimmer too waited a few seconds more and, without actually planning a move, allowed her foot to begin seeking the other out. She had just begun searching for it when her toe suddenly bumped into Catra's foot. </p><p>Glimmer had barely enough time to do anything when, without warning, softly, gently, Catra's foot moved over to hers and began caressing it, never holding still, indicating that this was being done in the spirit of fun and games, it was Catra's way of telling her that there was something about them, but that Glimmer shouldn't read into it. The stealth and stubbornness of her caresses sent chills down the younger girl's spine.</p><p>No, she wasn't going to cry, this wasn't a panic attack, it wasn't a "swoon," though she liked it very, very much, especially when the arch of Catra's foot lay on top of her foot.</p><p>It was when Glimmer looked at her dessert plate and saw that the chocolate cake seemed to have been speckled with a raspberry juice that it suddenly hit her that blood was streaming from her nose. </p><p>The pink haired girl gasped, and quickly crumpled a napkin and brought it to her face, holding her head forward. "Ice, Juliet, please," Asked, softly, to show everyone that she was in perfect control of the situation. "I was up at the hill this morning. Happens all the time," Explained, apologizing to the guests.</p><p>There was a scuffle of quick sounds as people rushed in and out of the dining room. Glimmer shut her eyes. 'Get a grip,' she kept saying to herself, 'Get a grip. Don't let your body give the whole thing away.'</p><p>--</p><p>"Was it my fault?" Catra asked when she stepped into Glimmer's bedroom after lunch.</p><p>"I'm a mess, aren't I?" Glimmer sighed. Catra smiled wanly and said nothing. "Sit for a second." </p><p>She sat at the far corner of the bed, as if visiting a hospitalized friend who was injured in a hunting accident. "Are you going to be okay?" Inquired</p><p>"I thought I was... I'll get over it." Glimmer had heard too many characters say the same thing in too many novels. It let the runaway lover off the hook. It allowed everyone to save face. It restored dignity and courage to the one whose cover had been completely blown.</p><p>"I'll let you sleep now." Spoken like an attentive nurse. On her way out she added, "I'll stick around."</p><p>As Glimmer tried to doze off, the incident on the square, lost somewhere amid the war memorial and the ride up the hill seemed to come back to her from summers and ages ago. As though she'd biked up to the square as a child before the Rebellion Wars and had returned a broken ninety-year-old soldier confined to a bedroom that was not even her own, because hers had been given over to a young woman who was the light of her eyes.</p><p>
  <em>The light of my eyes, light of my eyes, light of the world, that's what you are, light of my life. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don't know what light of my eyes mean, and part of me wonders where on earth have I fished out such claptrap from, but it's nonsense like this that brings tears to me now. Tears I wish I could drown your pillow in, soak your clothes in, tears I want you to touch with the tip of your tongue and make my sorrow go away. </em>
</p><p>Glimmer didn't understand why Catra had touched her foot. Was it a pass, or a well-meaning gesture of solidarity and comradeship? Like her chummy hug-massage, a lighthearted nudge between lovers who are no longer sleeping together but have decided to remain friends. Did it mean, 'I haven't forgotten, it'll always remain between us, even though nothing will come of it?'</p><p>She wanted to flee the house. Wanted it to be fall already and be as far away as she could. Leave town with its silly youth no one in their right mind would wish to befriend. Leave her parents and cousins, and those horrible summer guests with their awful home lives who always ended up hogging her bathroom. </p><p>What would happen if Glimmer saw Catra again? Would she bleed again, cry, fall apart? And what if she saw Catra with someone else? What if it was Adora?</p><p>Glimmer should avoid her, sever each tie, one by one, one thought-tormented wish from the next, stop going to the back garden, stop spying, stop heading to town at night, wean herself a bit at a time each day, like an addict, one day, one hour, one minute, one slop-infested second after the other. </p><p>It could be done. There was no future in it, after all. Bur first she needed to get it completely out of her system, and there was only one way.</p><p>If Catra came into Glimmer's bedroom at night... Better yet, if Glimmer had a few drinks and went into Catra's and told her the plain honest truth square in her face: <em>Catra, I want you to take me. Someone has to, and it might as well be you. </em></p><p>Correction: <em>I want it to be you. I'll try not to be the worst lay of your life. Just do with me as you would with anyone you hope never to run into again. I know this doesn't sound remotely romantic but I'm exhausted. So get on with it.</em></p><p>They'd do it. Then Glimmer would go back to her bedroom and clean up. After that, she'd be free and she'd be the one to occasionally place her foot on Catra's, and see how she liked that. </p><p>That was Glimmer's plan. That was going to be her way of getting Catra out of her system.</p><p>She'd wait for everyone to go to bed.</p><p>
  <em>Watch for the light.</em>
</p><p>Enter the room from the balcony. Knock?</p><p>
  <em>No, no knocking.</em>
</p><p>She was sure Catra slept naked.</p><p>What if she wasn't alone?</p><p><em>Listen outside the balcony before stepping in.</em> </p><p>If there was someone else with Catra and it was too late to beat a hasty retreat, she'd say, "Oops, wrong room." And if she was alone?</p><p><em>Walk in.</em> </p><p>Pajamas.</p><p>
  <em>No, the cute nightshirt from Aunt Casta.</em>
</p><p>No bottoms. </p><p>"I'm here for you." She would say. "Don't make it difficult, don't talk, don't give me reasons, don't tell me to be good."</p><p>Take off the nightshirt and slip into her bed. If Catra didn't touch her, then she'd be the one to touch her. If all didn't work then Glimmer would commit the ultimate indignity, tell Catra that the shame was all hers, not Glimmer's.</p><p>What if Catra didn't like it at all? What if she got really upset and offended? "Get out, you sick, wretched, twisted bitch."</p><p>
  <em>The kiss was proof enough. The foot-</em>
</p><p>The foot. The last time Catra had brought out such a reaction in Glimmer was not when she'd kissed her, but when she had pressed her thumb into the younger girl's shoulders.</p><p>When she awoke later that afternoon, Glimmer had an intense desire for yogurt. Childhood memories. She went to the kitchen and found Juliet lazily stowing away the china, which had been washed hours earlier. She must have napped too, and just awakened. Glimmer found a large peach in the fruit bowl and began to pare it. "Let me," The woman said, trying to grab the knife.</p><p>"No, no, that's ok." Glimmer replied</p><p>Juliet smiled softly, as if humoring someone who'd been hurt enough already. Did she know? Maybe she had seen the foot. Her eyes followed every step of the way as if ready to pounce on the knife before Glimmer slit her own veins with it.</p><p>After finishing adding the fruit to her yogurt and blending it, Glimmer poured it into a large glass and proceeded toward the patio. Her mother sat there, having tea with two sisters who had come all the way from Plumeria to talk. Glimmer brought her drink to the far end of the patio and tried to enjoy the last half hour of full sun. It was nice to sit and watch the waning day spread itself out into pre-dusk light. </p><p>She liked feeling so rested. Maybe the ancients were right: it never hurt to be bled from time to time.</p><p>She wanted Catra to come back and catch her ever so relaxed. Without any clue on what Glimmer was planning for the night. "Is Catra around?" Asked, turning to her mother.</p><p>"Didn't she go out?" Angella mentioned it offhandedly </p><p>Glimmer didn't reply. So much for 'I'll stick around.'</p><p>In a while, Juliet came to remove the empty glass. "Do you want more yogurt?"</p><p>"No, I'll go for a swim."</p><p>Anything but count the hours until the night.</p><p>On her way down the stairway to the beach, she encountered a group of friends. They were playing volleyball on the sand. Glimmer left them alone and ambled toward the large rock, stared at it for a while, and then looked out to the sea. She was not unhappy. She wanted to be with someone. But it didn't trouble her that she was alone.</p><p>Perfuma, who must have been worried, said she heard Glimmer had been unwell. "Do you—," she began. </p><p>"Do you know where Catra is?" Inquired, interrupting the blonde.</p><p>She pressed her lips in a thin line. "I don't know. I thought she went fishing."</p><p>"Fishing? She almost got killed the last time she was on that boat." Scowled. The boat should have been dismantled. </p><p>No response. She was looking to the setting sun. "You like her, don't you?"</p><p>"Yes," Nodded. There was nothing wrong with admitting she liked Catra, everyone did. But Perfuma's seriousness made it clear she had a specific kind of 'like' in mind. </p><p>"She likes you too—more than you do, I think." </p><p>Glimmer clenched her jaw. "Is that really your impression?" </p><p>"No, it's Catra's." The blonde revealed, still not looking directly at her </p><p>"When did she tell you that?" Frowned, disbelief in her voice</p><p>"She didn't. She told Scorpia."</p><p>It corresponded to the time when they had almost stopped speaking to each other. Even Angella had taken her aside that week and suggested she be more polite with their guest.</p><p>"I think she is right," said Perfuma.</p><p>Glimmer shrugged her shoulders. But she was drowning in fear again. In agony. She tried to still her mind and think of the sunset before them, the way people about to be given a polygraph like to visualize serene and placid settings to disguise their agitation.</p><p>When she returned after swimming, there was still no sign of the brunette. Her bike was in the same place as before noon. Glimmer went up to her room and from the balcony tried to make her way through the French windows of Catra's room.</p><p>They were shut. </p><p>--</p><p>After dragging her feet downstairs, she found her mother having cocktails with her aunt Castaspella. "Why don't you play something?" Angella asked.</p><p>"I don't feel like it." Grunted</p><p>"How come?" Inquired, as though taking issue with the tone of Glimmer's words.</p><p>"I just don't want to!" Shot back. Having finally crossed a major barrier that morning, she felt she could openly express the petty stuff that was on her mind.</p><p>Dinner was pushed back by another five to ten minutes. If Catra was late for dinner, she wouldn't eat with them. If she was late it meant she was having dinner elsewhere. Glimmer didn't want her to have dinner anywhere but with them.</p><p>"Let's sit down," said Angella. Catra's seat was empty. "She could at least have let us know she wasn't coming for dinner."</p><p>Glimmer could not show anxiety. Or that she cared. <em>Stay calm.</em></p><p>Castaspella, who, at the last minute, decided to stay for dinner, sat down. Catra's place setting was instantly removed.</p><p>The removal was performed without a hint of regret, the way you'd remove a bulb that was no longer working, or take off the sheets and blankets from a bed where someone had died. </p><p>'Here, take these, and remove them from sight.' </p><p>Glimmer watched Catra's silverware, her place mat, her napkin, her entire being disappear. It presaged exactly what would happen in less than a month. She could feel Juliet's eyes on her, but didn't dare to look up. She knew Juliet was scanning her face.</p><p>They both knew Glimmer knew Juliet felt sorry for her. </p><p>--</p><p>Later that night, while playing the piano, Glimmer's heart leapt when she thought she'd heard a scooter stop by the gate. Had someone given Catra a ride? She strained for the sound of footsteps, but no one came into the house.</p><p>Much, much later, in bed, she made out the sound of music coming from a car that had stopped by the main road. Door opened. Door slammed shut. Music faded. The sound of the gravel gently raked by the idle steps of someone deep in thought or drunk.</p><p>What if on the way to her room she were to step into Glimmer's bedroom? What if she asked if Glimmer was ok? If she was angry? What if Glimmer asked Catra to stay? Just for a second?</p><p>'I know myself,' Catra would likely say.</p><p><em>Liar</em>, Glimmer thought as she heard Catra's bedroom door squeak open and squeak shut. 'I’ll stick around.' <em>Sure. Liar.</em></p><p>Glimmer had left her bedroom door intentionally ajar. It was up to Catra. </p><p>She walked past the room, didn't stop. Didn't even hesitate. Nothing. 

</p><p>The door shut.</p><p>Traitor. </p><p>
  <em>Traitor.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At breakfast, as was the habit, Glimmer pretended not even to be aware of Catra. It was Micah who, on looking at her, exclaimed, "You look like you've had an exciting night."</p>
<p>"I hope you didn't go too far, otherwise you'll have to answer to Adora." Juliet spoke as she cracked open the top of a soft boiled egg. Catra still hadn't learned. </p>
<p>"I don't answer to her, Juliet." Scoffed</p>
<p>Glimmer could feel Juliet's eyes fall on her. "Then who do you answer to?" </p>
<p>"No one. There's no one I answer to." Catra shrugged. Glimmer envied her. </p>
<p>"Did you at least have fun last night?" Angella inquired</p>
<p>"I did." Came the reply as she was buttering her bread.</p>
<p>"I don't think we'd want to know what kind of fun," said Micah. Glimmer couldn't help but to agree.</p>
<p>"To be perfectly frank, I don't think I care to remember myself." </p>
<p>Glimmer admired people who talked about their vices as though they were distant relatives they'd learned to put up with because they couldn't quite disown them. '<em>I don't care to remember</em>'—like <em>I know myself </em>—hinted at a realm of human experience only others had access to, not Glimmer.</p>
<p>How she wished she could say such a thing one day — that she didn't care to remember what she'd done the night before in full morning glory. Ah, to proclaim her vices by shaking her head at them and wash the whole thing down with apricot juice freshly prepared by Angella and smack her lips afterward!</p>
<p>"How did you get home? Did you call a cab?" Angella furrowed her eyebrows</p>
<p>"Yes, ma'am." Catra nodded</p>
<p>The older woman smiled, relieved. "I wish I'd had your head at your age; I would have spared myself many mistaken turns" Micah spoke</p>
<p>"You, mistaken turns? Frankly, I can't picture either of you even imagining a mistaken turn." </p>
<p>"That's because you see us as figures, not as human beings. Worse yet: as old figures." He laughed. "But there were. Mistaken turns, that is. Everyone goes through a period when we take a different turn in life. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long." </p>
<p>Angella sighed melodiously, her way of warning present company that this could easily turn into an improvised lecture.</p>
<p>Catra proceeded to eat her egg. She had big bags under her eyes. "Sometimes those turns out to be the right way. Or as good a way as any."</p>
<p>Micah nodded pensively, his way of signifying that he was willing to yield. "At your age I knew nothing. But today everyone knows everything, and everyone talks, talks, talks."</p>
<p>"Perhaps what Catra needs is sleep, sleep, sleep." Juliet chastised</p>
<p>"Tonight, I promise, Juliet, no gambling, no drinking. I'll put on clean clothes, go over my papers, and after dinner we'll all watch TV, like old folks. But first," Catra added, with something of a smirk on her face, "I need to go to town for a short while. But tonight, I promise, I'll be the best-behaved girl in all of Bright Moon." </p>
<p>Which was what happened. After a brief escape to town, she was the "black bikini" Catra all day. </p>
<p>After lunch, she said she would take a nap—the first, and last, during her entire stay in Bright Moon. She did nap, and after waking up at around four, she looked as flush as someone who had lost five years of her life: ruddy cheeks, eyes all rested. She could have passed for Glimmer's age. </p>
<p>As promised, that night everyone sat down— there were no guests—and watched television romances. The best part was how everyone, including Juliet, who had her "seat" near the door of the living room, talked back to every scene, predicted its end, and were outraged of the stupidity of the story, the actors, the characters. </p>
<p>"Why, what would you have done in her place?" Angella asked </p>
<p>"I would have left him, that's what." Catra scoffed, "And you, Juliet?"</p>
<p>"Well, in my opinion, I think she should have accepted him the first time he asked and not shilly-shallied so long."</p>
<p>"Exactly! She got what was coming to her." Glimmer joined in</p>
<p>Angella nodded. "That she did."</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>That night they all went to bed early. Exhaustion was the order of the day. Glimmer must have slept very soundly, because when she awoke breakfast was being removed from the table.</p>
<p>She found Catra lying on the grass with her papers to her left and a yellow pad directly under her chest. Glimmer was hoping she'd look tired or be in the mood she'd been on the day before. But she was already hard at work. </p>
<p>It felt awkward, breaking the silence. Glimmer was tempted to fall back on her habit of pretending not to notice her, but that seemed too hard to do now, especially since Catra had told her two days earlier that she'd seen through the act. </p>
<p>Glimmer couldn't hold back either way.</p>
<p>"I waited for you the other night." She sounded like her mother reproaching her father when he came home inexplicably late. Glimmer never knew she could sound so peevish.</p>
<p>"Why didn't you come into town?" was Catra's answer. "You could've found me if you really wanted to."</p>
<p>'<em>If you really wanted to.</em>' "Dunno."</p>
<p>"We had a nice time, you would have too." Her eyes fell to Glimmer. "Did you rest at least?"</p>
<p>"In a way. Restless. But okay." </p>
<p>And with that Catra was back to staring at the page she had just been reading and was mouthing the syllables, perhaps to show she was very focused on the page.</p>
<p>"Are you headed into town this morning?" Glimmer knew she was interrupting and hated herself for it.</p>
<p>"Later, maybe." </p>
<p>She should have taken the hint, and she did. But part of her refused to. "I was going to head into town myself."</p>
<p>"I see."</p>
<p>"A book I ordered has finally arrived. I'm to pick it up at the bookstore this morning."</p>
<p>"I'll pick it up for you if you want." Offered.</p>
<p>Glimmer stared. She felt like a child who, despite all manner of indirect pleas and hints, finds herself unable to remind her parents they'd promised to take her to the toy store. "It was just that I was hoping we'd go together." No point beating around the bush any longer.</p>
<p>"You mean like the other day?" Catra added, as though to help Glimmer say what she couldn't bring herself to say.</p>
<p>"I don't think we'll ever do anything like that again." She was trying to sound noble and grave in her defeat. "But, yes, like that."</p>
<p>Catra had lifted her eyes from her papers and was staring her straight in the face, which made the younger girl terribly uneasy. "Do you like me that much, Glimmer?"</p>
<p>"Do I like you?" Glimmer fully intended to reply with an evasive 'Perhaps' that was supposed to mean 'Absolutely', but when she let her tongue loose: "Do I like you, Catra? I worship you." Came out instead.</p>
<p>There, she had said it. She wanted the word to startle Catra and to come like a slap in the face. 'To worship' seemed to say more than anyone might dare say under the circumstances; That Glimmer, an extremely shy girl, found the courage to say such a thing could come from one place only: from a dream she had the night before. In her dream Catra had pleaded with her, saying, '<em>You'll kill me if you stop.</em>' </p>
<p>"I'll go with you to town," Catra said, refusing to meet her gaze. "But—" '<em>You'll kill me if you stop.</em>' "No speeches."</p>
<p>"No speeches, nothing, not a word."</p>
<p>"I'll meet you in the front in half an hour."</p>
<p>They rode their bicycles to town and were done with Catra's errands before long, but even after a coffee at the bar, the bookstore wasn't open yet. So they lingered on the piazzetta, Glimmer staring at the war memorial, Catra looking out at the view of the speckling bay.</p>
<p>So much but really nothing was said between them. </p>
<p>Until, without thinking, Catra asked how Mara could have drowned in such a sea. Glimmer smiled right away, it felt like a passionate wet kiss. "I thought we weren't going to mention—,"</p>
<p>"No speeches." </p>
<p>When they returned to the bookshop, it felt special. Like showing someone your private chapel, the place where, as with the berm, one comes to be alone, to dream of others. </p>
<p>
  <em>'This is where I dreamed of you before you came into my life.'</em>
</p>
<p>The bookseller had ordered two copies of the book Glimmer wanted, one a paperback edition and the other an expensive hardbound. An impulse made her say she'd take both and to put them on her father's bill. Glimmer then asked his assistant for a pen, opened up the hardbound edition, and wrote, 'For you in silence, somewhere in Bright Moon.'</p>
<p>In years to come, if the book was still in Catra's possession, Glimmer wanted her to ache. Better yet, she wanted someone to look through her books one day, open up that tiny volume, and ask, 'Tell me, who gave this to you in silence, somewhere in Bright Moon?'</p>
<p>And then she wanted Catra to feel something as darting as sorrow and fiercer than regret, maybe even pity. If pity was all Catra had to give, if pity could have made her put an arm around Glimmer, she'd gladly take it. </p>
<p>"I just want to thank you for this morning." And before Catra even thought of interrupting, the younger girl added, "No speeches." </p>
<p>Avoiding all mention of what happened, which gave every indication of drawing them apart, was, instead, a perfectly synchronized moment of intimacy. </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>No speeches. 

But, if Catra were to ask, then Glimmer would spill everything. </p>
<p>She'd tell Catra that each night she would open the shutters and would step out onto the balcony, hoping to be heard. Glimmer would wait for her there, wearing only a nightshirt, she wouldn't sleep, or read, just stare, because she couldn't bring herself to sleep. And if Catra asked why Glimmer couldn't sleep, she'd simply say, 'You don't want to know'</p>
<p>An owl, the sound of window shutters squeaking against the wind, the music from a distant adjoining town, the scuffling of cats very late at night, anything could wake Glimmer. But she'd known these since childhood and knew how to brush them away and fall instantly back to sleep. </p>
<p>Yet sleep would not come, and sure enough not one but two troubling thoughts stood and watched over her: desire and shame, the longing to throw open the window and run into Catra's room, and on the other hand, the repeated inability to do so. </p>
<p>They were the legacy of her youth, the two mascots of her life, hunger and fear, watching over her, saying, <em>'If not later, Glimmer, when?'</em> </p>
<p>She'd tell Catra about her dream, the one that made her finally understand what her body must have known from the very first day.</p>
<p>They were in her old room, and, contrary to all other fantasies, it was not her who had her back on the bed, but Catra. Glimmer was the one on top, watching on Catra's face an expression at once so flushed, so readily compliant, that even in her sleep it tore every emotion out of her and told Glimmer that to not give Catra what she wanted was the greatest crime she could ever commit. And then she heard it, "You'll kill me if you stop." </p>
<p>She was gasping, her face an image of kindness and fire Glimmer had never seen and could never have imagined on anyone's face before. That dream became a night-light in her life, rekindling her desire, stoking the embers of courage. The look on Catra's face became like the tiny snapshot of a beloved that soldiers take with them to the battlefield, not only to remember there are good things in life and that happiness awaits them, but to remind themselves that this face might never forgive them for coming back in a body bag.</p>
<p>So when she offered the book in the bookstore, and later insisted on being the one to pay for their ice cream, it was to thank Catra for giving Glimmer 'You'll kill me if you stop.' </p>
<p>'You'll kill me if you stop' was far more precious now than any other admission from Catra.</p>
<p>That morning, Glimmer had written it down in her diary but omitted to say she had dreamt it. She wanted to come back to it years later and believe, if only for a moment, that Catra had truly spoken those pleading words to her. She wanted to preserve the voice which lingered for days afterward and told her that, if she could have Catra like that in her dreams every night, she'd stake her entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>At lunch, not a word. After lunch Catra sat in the shade in the garden doing, as she announced before coffee, two days' work. No, she wasn't going to town. Then she went upstairs. A few days ago her foot was on Glimmer's. Now, not even a glance.</p>
<p>Around dinner, she came back down for a drink. "I'll miss all this," she said, her hair glistening after her late-afternoon shower. Micah smiled; she was welcome anytime. Then she took a walk with Scorpia. Glimmer never quite understood what the two of them had, but she could tell how natural and spontaneous their friendship was. Half an hour later, they were back.</p>
<p>At dinner not a word. After dinner she disappeared upstairs.</p>
<p>Glimmer could have sworn that sometime around ten or so Catra would make a quiet getaway and head to town. But she could see the light drifting from her end of the balcony and from time to time, she heard Catra moving.</p>
<p>She decided to head to town herself, then. 

After seeing her Angella said, "Why don't you call your friends? Are you avoiding them?" </p>
<p><em>Not avoiding—but they were full of complications.</em> </p>
<p>"As if you aren't!" </p>
<p>Her parents were watching TV when she walked out of the house. Glimmer's steps sounded so loud in the gravel, but she didn't mind the noise. It kept her company. Catra would hear it too. She left the house via a shortcut that was steeper but that brought her to town in no time. The light and the sound of bustling nightlife from the piazzetta were brimming over into the side alleys. </p>
<p>When Glimmer entered the piazza the bustle and commotion filled her with the usual sense of anxiety and inadequacy. She could see her friends, they were bound to tease and ask questions. Rather than join them, she began to walk casually through the crowd. She liked it when cobblestones glistened in the dark. The bookstore was still open.</p>
<p>The owner was thinking of closing soon, but a couple in their mid-twenties, tourists, were thumbing through books, probably looking for a novel with local color. How different from that morning when there hadn't been a soul about and blinding sunlight and the smell of fresh coffee had filled the shop. </p>
<p>Glimmer picked up a book of poetry on the table and began to read one of the poems. The couple next to her was about to purchase a novel, she interrupted their conversation and advised against it. "This one, much better. It's set in Salineas, not here, but it's probably the best novel I've ever read." </p>
<p>"We've seen the movie," said the girl. "Is it as good?" </p>
<p>Glimmer shrugged her shoulders. "The movie is nothing in comparison. But I'm just a kid, what do I know?"</p>
<p>As she left the bookstore and lit a cigarette, a loud metallic rattle caught her attention. The owner was lowering the steel shutter.  </p>
<p>Watching him, she found herself composing the note she resolved to slip under Catra's door that night: <em>Can't stand the silence. I need to speak to you.</em></p>
<p>By the time Glimmer was home and ready to slip the note under her door it was already dawn and the message had been changed countless times.</p>
<p>She tore out another sheet of paper from a school notebook.</p>
<p>"<em>Please don't avoid me.</em>"</p>
<p>Then added: "<em>It kills me</em>."</p>
<p>Which she rewrote to: "<em>Your silence is killing me.</em>"</p>
<p>"<em>Can't stand thinking you hate me.</em>"</p>
<p>"<em>I'd sooner die than know you hate me.</em>"</p>
<p>At the last minute it came back to the original.</p>
<p>"<em>Can't stand the silence. I need to speak to you.</em>"</p>
<p>Glimmer folded the piece of lined paper and slipped it under Catra's door with a resigned apprehension.</p>
<p>There was no turning back. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At breakfast the next day, when Catra finally showed up after her jog, all she asked without raising her head was whether Glimmer had enjoyed herself the night before, the implication being she had gone to bed very late. </p>
<p>"So-so," Glimmer replied, trying to keep her answer as vague as possible.</p>
<p>"Must be tired, then," was her father's ironic contribution to the conversation. </p>
<p>Micah and Catra exchanged significant glances. Then they began discussing the day's workload. And Glimmer lost her. Another day of torture.</p>
<p>When she went back upstairs to fetch her books, she saw the familiar folded piece of lined notebook paper on a desk. Catra must have stepped into the room using the balcony door and placed it there. If she read it, there was a good chance it would ruin her day. But if she put off reading it, the whole day would become meaningless, and she wouldn't be able to think of anything else. </p>
<p>In all likelihood, Catra was tossing it back without adding anything on it, as though to mean: "<em>I found this on the floor. It's probably yours. Later!</em>" Or it might mean something far worse: "<em>No reply.</em>"</p>
<p>
  <em>'Grow up. I'll see you at midnight.'</em>
</p>
<p>It was what she had added under Glimmer's words.</p>
<p>It filled her with instant yearning and dismay. Did she want it, now that something was being offered? And was it in fact being offered? And if she wanted or didn't want it, how would Glimmer live out the day till midnight? It was barely ten in the morning: fourteen hours to go... </p>
<p>The last time she had waited so long for something was the Saturday two years before when a boy had promised they'd meet at the movies and Glimmer wasn't sure he hadn't forgotten. </p>
<p>Half a day watching her entire life being put on hold. How she hated waiting and depending on the whim of others.</p>
<p>Should she answer her note?</p>
<p>
  <em>You can't answer an answer!</em>
</p>
<p>As for the note: was its tone intentionally light, or was it meant to look like an afterthought scribbled away minutes after jogging and seconds before breakfast?</p>
<p>Were they going to talk—just talk? Was this an order or a consent to see her at the hour specified in every novel and every play? And where were they going to meet at midnight?  Would Catra find a moment during the day to tell her where? Or, being aware that the respective ends of the balcony was entirely artificial, did she assume that one of them would eventually cross the unspoken line that had never stopped anyone?</p>
<p>And when Glimmer ran into her, was she supposed to flash Catra a significant smile, or to go on as before, and offer, instead, a cold, glazed, discreet Fright Zone gaze? What Glimmer most wished to show her the next time they crossed paths was gratitude. </p>
<p>
  <em>Say nothing and she'll think you regret having written.</em>
</p>
<p>But if she said anything, it would be out of place.</p>
<p>Do what, then?</p>
<p>
  <em>Wait.</em>
</p>
<p>Glimmer knew that from the very start. </p>
<p>Just wait.</p>
<p>She'd work all morning. Swim. Maybe play tennis in the afternoon. Be back by midnight. No, eleven-thirty. Wash? No wash?</p>
<p>And then a terrible panic seized Glimmer: what if midnight was going to be a talk, a clearing of the air between them—as in, buck up, <em>grow up</em>!</p>
<p>But why wait for midnight, then? Who ever picks midnight to have such a conversation?</p>
<p>The day went as she feared.</p>
<p>Catra found a way to leave and did not come back until lunch when she sat in her usual place next to Glimmer. The younger girl tried to make light conversation a few times but realized that it was going to be another one of their let's-not-speak-to-each-other days. After lunch, she went to take a nap. Catra followed her upstairs, but shut her door. Later Glimmer called her friends. They met on the tennis court and played for hours under the scorching sun.</p>
<p>Afterwards, they all sat on the old bench in the shade and listened to the crickets. Juliet brought them refreshments and then warned that she was too old for that, that the next time they'd have to fetch whatever they wanted themselves. "But we never asked you for anything," Glimmer protested. </p>
<p>"You shouldn't have drunk, then." And she shuffled away, having scored her point.</p>
<p>Scorpia, who liked to watch Perfuma play, did not come that day. She must have been with Catra. Glimmer loved August weather. The town was quieter than usual in the late summer weeks.</p>
<p>She loved the afternoons best: the scent of rosemary, the heat, the birds, the cicadas, the sway of palm fronds, the silence. She liked looking up to their house from the tennis court and seeing the empty balconies bask in the sun, knowing that from any one of them you could spot the limitless sea. That was her balcony, her world. From where she sat, she could look around her and say, '<em>Here is my tennis court, there my garden, my orchard, my house, and below is my wharf — everyone and everything I care for is here. My family, my instruments, my books... Catra.</em>'</p>
<p>That afternoon, it did occur to Glimmer that she was, in Catra's words, one of the luckiest girls on earth. There was no saying how long all of it would last, just as there was no sense in second-guessing how the day might turn out, or the night. Every minute felt as though stretched on tenterhooks. Everything could snap in a flash.</p>
<p>Everyone left just before dinnertime. Perfuma had promised to go to the movies with Scorpia. Frosta would go with the others to town, she said. Did Glimmer want to come? </p>
<p>"No, it's ok. I'll stay home and transcribe some songs."</p>
<p>Three hours to go.</p>
<p>There'd been a mournful silence all afternoon. If Glimmer hadn't had Catra's word that they were going to talk later, she wouldn't have survived another day like that.</p>
<p>At dinner, the guests were Spinnerella and Netossa. The two married women sat next to each other, facing Angella and Glimmer. Her mother had warned her not to misbehave in their presence. She'd taken Glimmer's endless questions three years before when they met the wrong way. As if she was poking fun at them when she asked about how they lived the way they did.</p>
<p>"You're too old not to accept people as they are." What she didn't know was that Glimmer had more in common with them than with her parents, and her questions were rooted in the curiosity, even then, about what their life together was like.</p>
<p>It was almost eleven when Glimmer said she was going to sleep and said goodnight to her parents and the guests. She wanted to be alone. Shower. A book. A diary entry, perhaps. Stay focused on midnight yet keep her mind off every aspect of it.</p>
<p>On her way up the staircase, she tried to imagine herself coming down that very same staircase the morning after. By then Glimmer might have been someone else. Would she even like this future Glimmer who might despise her current self for having brought her to that state? Or would she remain the exact same person walking up the staircase, with nothing about her changed, and not one of her doubts resolved?</p>
<p>No. If nothing at all happened and Catra refused her, even if no one found out, Glimmer would still be humiliated. Catra would know; Glimmer would know. There was no way she could ever remain the same.</p>
<p>How would she fall asleep after such humiliation? Slink back into her room and pretend to open a book and read herself to sleep?</p>
<p>Or: how would she go back to sleep no longer a virgin? What had been in her head for so long would now be out in the real world. She felt like someone entering a tattoo parlor and taking a last, long look at her bare left shoulder. </p>
<p>
  <em>Should I be punctual?</em>
</p>
<p>At midnight there wasn't a sound coming from Catra's room. Could she have stood Glimmer up? That would be too much. Maybe she should wait until Catra came to her room? </p>
<p>
  <em>Waiting would be torture. I'll go to her.</em>
</p>
<p>She stepped out onto the balcony for a second and peered in the direction of Catra's bedroom. No light. She could wait. Or not go at all.</p>
<p>Not going suddenly burst on her like the one thing she wanted most in life. It kept tugging at her, like someone who'd already whispered once or twice in her sleep but, seeing Glimmer wasn't waking, had finally tapped her on the shoulder. The thought washed over her like water, like numbness, the kind that works on your extremities first and then penetrates to the rest of your body, giving all manner of arguments, starting with the silly ones—it's way too late for anything tonight—rising to the major ones—how will you face others, how will you face yourself?</p>
<p>Why hadn't she thought of that before?</p>
<p>
  <em>Because I wanted to savor and save it for last?</em>
</p>
<p>Because Glimmer wanted the counterarguments to spring on their own, without having any part in summoning them at all, so that she wouldn't be blamed for them. </p>
<p>'<em>Don't try, don't try this, Glimmer.</em>' It was her grandmother's voice. She was speaking to Glimmer from the very bed where she'd crossed a far more menacing divide than the one between her room and Catra's. '<em>Turn back. Who knows what you'll find once you're in that room. The years are watching you now, every star you see tonight already knows your fate, your ancestors are gathered here and are all telling you; don't go there.</em>'</p>
<p>But Glimmer loved the fear—if fear it really was—and this they didn't know, her ancestors. She loved the boldness that was pushing her forward; "You'll kill me if you stop"—or was it: "I'll die if I stop." </p>
<p>She knocked on the glass panel, softly. </p>
<p>No sooner had Glimmer knocked, she heard something stir inside, like someone looking for their slippers. Her heart was beating like crazy. </p>
<p>"I'm glad you came," Catra said as she opened the balcony door, stepping aside as an invitation. "I could hear you moving in your room and for a while I thought you were getting ready to go to bed and had changed your mind."</p>
<p>"Of course I was coming."</p>
<p>It was strange seeing Catra fussing awkwardly that way. Glimmer had expected a hailstorm of jabs, which was why she was nervous. Instead, she was greeted with the familiar hesitance she'd seen so often in herself.</p>
<p>Glimmer stepped into her old bedroom and was instantly taken aback by the smell which she couldn't quite place, because it could have been a combination of so many things, until she noticed the half-full ashtray sitting on a desk.</p>
<p>Not knowing what else to do or say, Glimmer muttered, "I'm nervous." She stood there, lifeless and frozen. </p>
<p>Catra tried to smile away the awkwardness between them. "Me too."</p>
<p>Glimmer wanted to hug her, but caught herself in time, thinking that an embrace after such chilly moments all day was unsuitable. "Me more than you." Just because someone says they'll see you at midnight doesn't mean you're automatically bound to hug them when you've barely shaken hands all week.</p>
<p>Sitting on the bed, with her legs crossed, hair down, Catra looked smaller, younger. Glimmer was standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed, not knowing what to do with her hands. Catra must have seen her struggling. "Come, sit."</p>
<p>Did she mean on a chair or on the bed itself?</p>
<p>Hesitantly, Glimmer crawled onto the bed and sat facing her, cross-legged as well, as though that was the accepted protocol among women who meet at midnight. </p>
<p>Suddenly, staring at the softness in Catra's eyes, Glimmer was reminded of her dream and all of her shyness and inhibitions washed away. Nervous or not nervous, she no longer cared to cross-examine every one of her impulses. </p>
<p>
  <em>If I'm stupid, let me be stupid. If I touch her, so I'll touch her. If I want to hug her, I'll hug her.</em>
</p>
<p>She needed to lean against something, so sidling up to the top of the bed, the younger girl leaned her back against the headboard next to Catra. In a few weeks, Glimmer would be back on that very same bed. </p>
<p>She wondered whether she would look back on it with sorrow, or shame, or indifference.</p>
<p>"You okay?" Catra asked.</p>
<p>"I'm okay."</p>
<p>There was absolutely nothing to say. </p>
<p>With her toes, Glimmer reached over to Catra's toes and touched them. She did not recoil or respond. Since she was sitting to her left, these were probably not the toes that had touched Glimmer's at lunch the other day. It was Catra's right foot that was guilty. She tried to reach it, all the while avoiding touching both her knees.</p>
<p>"What are you doing?" The older girl finally laughed. </p>
<p>"Nothing." Glimmer didn't know either. After that, she moved closer to Catra and then hugged her.</p>
<p>She did not hug back. "That's a start," Catra said, perhaps with a tad more humor in her voice than Glimmer wished. Instead of speaking, Glimmer shrugged her shoulders, hoping she'd feel the shrug and not ask any more questions. Glimmer liked hugging her. "Does this make you happy?"</p>
<p>Glimmer nodded. </p>
<p>Finally, as if their position urged her to do so, Catra brought her arm around Glimmer. </p>
<p>The last thing Glimmer wanted at that point was friendship. Which was why, without interrupting the embrace, she loosened the hold for a moment, time enough to bring both her arms under Catra's loose shirt and resume her embrace. She wanted skin. </p>
<p>"You sure you want this?" Inquired, as if that doubt was why she'd been hesitant all along.</p>
<p>Glimmer nodded again, but she was lying. She wasn't sure at all. </p>
<p>"We haven't talked," Catra insisted.</p>
<p>Another shrug, meaning, 'No need to.'</p>
<p>She lifted Glimmer's face with both hands and stared at her as they had done that day. "Can I kiss you?" </p>
<p>What a question, coming after their kiss on the berm. Or had they wiped the slate clean and were starting all over again? Glimmer did not give her an answer. Without speaking or nodding, she had already brought her mouth to Catra's. </p>
<p>For a second, it seemed there was absolutely no difference between them, just two women kissing, and even that seemed to dissolve, as she began to feel they were not even two women, just two beings. Glimmer loved it, human to human, woman to woman. Loved the night-light. It made her feel snug and safe. She even loved the stale, wan feel of her old bedroom, which was littered with Catra's things: pictures, a chair turned into an end table, books, cards, music.</p>
<p>Glimmer decided to get under the covers. She loved the smell. She even liked the fact that there were things on the bed that hadn't been removed and which she kept kneeing into and didn't mind encountering, because they were part of Catra's bed, her life, her world.</p>
<p>Catra got under the covers too and, before Glimmer knew it, started to undress her. She had worried about how to undress, how, if Catra didn't help, she'd do what so many girls did in the movies, take off her nightshirt, drop her underwear, and just stand there, stark-naked, arms hanging down, meaning: '<em>This is who I am, this is how I'm made, here, take me, I'm yours.</em>' </p>
<p>But Catra had solved the problem. </p>
<p>She kept whispering, "Off, and off, and off, and off," which made Glimmer laugh, and suddenly she was totally naked, feeling the weight of the sheet on her skin, not a secret left in the world, because wanting to be in bed with Catra was her only secret and there she was, sharing it with her. How wonderful to feel Catra's hands all over her under the sheets. She was still dressed, and Glimmer found that she loved being naked before her. Then Catra kissed her, and kissed her again, deeply the second time, as if she too was finally letting go.</p>
<p>At some point Glimmer realized Catra was finally naked, though she hadn't noticed her undress, but there she was, not a part of her not touching Glimmer. It was when she finally did find the courage to ask Catra, "Are you okay with this?"</p>
<p>Catra smiled. "I am." </p>
<p>"Did I tell you I was okay too?" </p>
<p>"Yes." </p>
<p>Glimmer looked away, because Catra was staring at her with those eyes, and Glimmer knew she was blushing, and knew she still wanted Catra to stare at her even if it was embarrassing. How far they had come from the afternoon, so long ago, when Glimmer had unbuttoned her shorts and fantasized about this moment, only to be interrupted by Catra herself. Now they were on the cusp of something, but Glimmer also wanted it to last forever, because she knew there'd be no coming back from it.</p>
<p>She had an impulse to stop Catra, and when the older girl noticed, she did ask, but Glimmer did not answer, or didn't know what to answer, and an eternity seemed to pass between her reluctance to make up her mind and Catra's instinct to decide for her. </p>
<p>The dream had been right—the look on her face made Glimmer sure, that denying Catra of anything would be the biggest regret of her life, yet, in the end, it was Glimmer, and not her, who blurted out, not once, but many, many times, "You'll kill me if you stop, you'll kill me if you stop," because it was her way of bringing full circle the dream and the fantasy, her and Catra.</p>
<p>Until the older girl whispered on her ear, as soft as Glimmer had ever heard her. "Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine."</p>
<p>"Glimmer." And as soon as she said her own name as though it were Catra's, she was taken to a realm she never shared with anyone in her life before, or since. </p>
<p>Catra smiled, joining their lips together once more, "Catra."</p>
<p>Wasn't it what she wanted all along? To be <strong>with</strong> Catra, to <strong>be</strong> Catra, Catra, Catra, Catra... "Glimmer."</p>
<p>"Catra." She could have cried. </p>
<p>
  <em>"Glimmer."</em>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <em>"Catra."</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Did we make too much noise?"</p>
<p>Catra smiled. "Nothing to worry about."</p>
<p>Glimmer held back what could've been tears, she wasn't sure. "Juliet always looks for signs."</p>
<p>"She won't find any." Assured her, picking up a shirt to put on</p>
<p>"You wore that shirt on your first day here." Glimmer spoke, "Will you give it to me when you go?" </p>
<p>Catra smiled again, but didn't answer. Glimmer decided to reach for her own nightshirt, grabbing it from the floor where it sat under a book. She remembered, though ever so distantly, having shoved it away while Catra was inside her. </p>
<p>It was the book she had given to Catra.</p>
<p>It filled her with a sense of dread and anxiety she couldn't begin to fathom. She felt queasy, as if she had been sick and needed many showers to wash everything off. Glimmer needed to be far away—from Catra, from her room, from what they'd done together. </p>
<p>It was as though she was slowly landing from an awful nightmare but wasn't quite touching the ground yet and wasn't sure she wanted to, because what awaited was going to be much worse. She would never be the same. All the things she had let Catra do to her, and how eagerly had she participated in them, and spurred them on, and then begged her, 'Please don't stop.'</p>
<p>She had crossed a terrible line and the bite marks all over her proved it. It would haunt and sully her love for everything and everyone that came after Catra, it would tarnish everything good in her.</p>
<p>Something bordering on nausea, something like remorse began to grip her and seemed to define itself ever more clearly with each passing second along with the ache all over her body. Glimmer had known it would ache. What she hadn't expected was that the ache would find itself coiled and twisted into sudden pangs of guilt. No one had told her about it.</p>
<p>Outside it was clearly dawn. Why was Catra so quiet? Was she staring at her? Had she guessed what Glimmer was feeling?  </p>
<p>"You're not happy," She finally said.</p>
<p>Glimmer shrugged her shoulders. It wasn't about Catra—it was about what they had done. Glimmer didn't want her looking into her heart.</p>
<p>"You're regretting it, aren't you?"</p>
<p>Again she shrugged the comment away.</p>
<p>"I knew we shouldn't have. I knew it," Catra repeated. For the first time in her life Glimmer watched her balk, prey to self-doubt. "We should have talked."</p>
<p>"Maybe," Glimmer said. Of all the things she could have uttered that morning, the insignificant '<em>maybe</em>' was the cruelest.</p>
<p>"Did you hate it?"</p>
<p>No, she didn't hate it at all. But what she felt was worse than hate. Glimmer didn't want to remember, didn't want to think about it. Just put it away. It had never happened. She had tried it and didn't like it, and now she wanted her money back.</p>
<p>
  <em>'Take me back to that moment when I'm almost stepping out onto the balcony barefoot. I'll go no farther, I'll sit and stew and never know — better to argue with my body than feel what I am feeling now.'</em>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>Glimmer, we warned you, didn't we?</strong>
</p>
<p>"You can go to sleep, if you want," Catra said, perhaps the kindest words she'd ever spoken to Glimmer. If only she knew. If only she knew Glimmer want to be leagues and a lifetime away from her. </p>
<p>She needed Catra as far away as possible if she was to feel better and forget — but she also needed her close by in case everything took a turn for the worse and there was no one to turn to. So instead Glimmer hugged her and closed her eyes. A part of her was actually happy the whole thing was behind her. Catra was out of her system. The questions were: Would she understand? And would she forgive Glimmer? </p>
<p>They decided to go for a swim together. Glimmer had wanted the sea to wash away the shame, the marks, yet there they were, clinging to her body. She wished all her doubts about herself could be washed away as well, dispelled as an evil rumor or a false belief.</p>
<p>They sat on one of the rocks and talked. Why hadn't they talked like that before? Glimmer would have been less desperate for her had they been able to have that kind of friendship weeks earlier. Perhaps they might have avoided sleeping together. </p>
<p>Perhaps she would have been able to speak with Catra and not feel like she was doing it to impress her or to draw her attention. What a lovely friendship it might have been.</p>
<p>At some point Catra interrupted her with an awkward smile. "You okay?"</p>
<p>Glimmer smiled back faintly, knowing she was already clamming up, shutting the doors and windows between them. "I'm fine."</p>
<p>"I meant—"</p>
<p>"I know what you meant. " She turned her face the other way, as though a chill draft had touched her ear and she wished to avoid having it hit her face. "Do we need to speak about it?" </p>
<p>"Not if you don't want to." </p>
<p>Glimmer wished they hadn't slept together. Even Catra's body left her indifferent now. </p>
<p>Shoulder: check. Area between inner and outer elbow that she had worshipped once: check. Neck: check. Curves of the apricot: check. Foot—oh, that foot: but, yes, check. Her smile, when she'd said, '<em>You okay?</em>': yes, check that too. </p>
<p>Glimmer had worshipped them all once, but they'd been hers for a night and now she no longer wanted them. What she couldn't remember, much less understand, was how she could have brought herself to desire them, to do all she had done to be near them, touch them, sleep with them. </p>
<p>As they were swimming back, Catra asked, "Are you going to hold last night against me?"</p>
<p>"No," Glimmer answered. But it had been answered too swiftly for someone who meant what they were saying. To soften the ambiguity of her no, she added. "No, of course not." </p>
<p>It never occurred to her, as she was going through the heady motions of feeling over and done with Catra, that what she was feeling was how addicts easily forswear an addiction immediately after a fix. Or that the reason she'd decided not to distance herself from Catra too quickly and to thread lightly was not just to avoid hurting her feelings, but because she was not sure that within a few hours Glimmer wouldn't be desperate for her again.</p>
<p>After their swim she had taken a much-awaited shower. Forget, forget. </p>
<p>Walking to her room after the shower, she turned around to find Catra at the door. The brunette hesitated for a second and then stepped into Glimmer's room, taking her by surprise. "Take your shorts off." </p>
<p>Glimmer didn't have it in her to disobey. She lowered them and took them off. It was the first time she'd been naked with Catra in broad daylight. </p>
<p>"Sit down." Ordered. Glimmer had barely done as she was told when Catra brought her mouth to her thighs. Glimmer was wet and moaning in no time. "We'll save it for later," She said with a smirk on her face and was instantly gone. Was that revenge?</p>
<p>There they went—Glimmer's self-confidence and her checklist of cravings she was done with. '<em>Great work, it didn't even last a day.</em>' She cleaned herself, put on the nightshirt she had worn the night before, threw herself on the bed, and didn't awake till Juliet knocked at the door asking whether she wanted eggs for breakfast.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>When Catra finally joined them she was wearing Glimmer's shorts. No one had given it another glance, but Glimmer knew it was the same shorts she had worn that very dawn when they'd gone out for a swim. Watching Catra wearing her clothes was an unbearable turn-on for Glimmer, and Catra knew it. It was turning both of them on, the idea that what belonged to Glimmer also belonged to Catra.</p>
<p>Was she being lured back again? At the table, Catra decided to sit at her side and, when no one was looking, slipped her foot not on top of but under Glimmer's. </p>
<p>She was not allowing Glimmer to forget her. It reminded her of a married chatelaine who, after sleeping with a young vassal one night, had him seized by the palace guards the next morning and executed in a dungeon, not to eliminate all evidence or to prevent her young lover from becoming a nuisance now that he thought he was entitled to her favors, but to stem the temptation to seek him out again. Was Catra becoming a nuisance? And what was Glimmer to do—tell her parents?</p>
<p>That morning she went into town alone. Post office, the usual rounds. Glimmer saw her pedal down the cypress lane, still wearing her shorts. No one had ever worn her clothes. </p>
<p>Perhaps that was what happened when two beings need, not just to be close together, but to become the other. To be who Glimmer was because of Catra. To be who Catra was because of Glimmer. To be in Catra's mouth while she was in Glimmer's and no longer be able to tell who was who.</p>
<p>Those thoughts made her want to drop everything and run to Catra. She waited about ten minutes, then took out her bike and, despite her promise to herself, scaled the steep hillside road as fast as she could. When Glimmer reached the piazzetta she realized she had arrived minutes after Catra. She was parking her bike, had already purchased the Herald Tribune, and was heading for the post office—her first errand. </p>
<p>"I had to see you," Spoke, catching the older girl's attention as she rushed to her. </p>
<p>"Why, something wrong?" Catra frowned, surprised</p>
<p>"I just had to see you." Confessed</p>
<p>"Aren't you sick of me?" </p>
<p>'<em>I thought I was—</em>' Glimmer was about to say '<em>—and I wanted to be—</em>' "I want to be with you." Then it hit her: "If you want, I'll go back," flushed. </p>
<p>Catra stood still, dropped her hand with the bundle of unsent letters still in it, and simply stood there staring at Glimmer, shaking her head. "Do you have any idea how glad I am we slept together?"</p>
<p>Glimmer shrugged her shoulders as though to put away another compliment. She was unworthy of compliments, most of all coming from Catra. "I don't know."</p>
<p>"Of course you don't know." She smiled for a second before turning serious again, "I just don't want you to regret any of it. I dread the thought of having messed you up. I don't want either of us to have to pay."</p>
<p>"I don't regret it." Glimmer declared, and then added, "I'm not telling anyone. There won't be any trouble for you."</p>
<p>"I didn't mean that kind of trouble, and I'm sure I'll pay for this somehow." And for the first time in daylight she caught a glimpse of a different Catra. "... This is something which I haven't figured out, and the fact that I can't scares me."</p>
<p>"Are you happy I came?" </p>
<p>"I'd hold you and kiss you if I could."</p>
<p>Glimmer couldn't hold back a smile. "Me too." She tugged on the older girl's shirt and pulled her to an empty side alley where they kissed. There she inched closer to Catra's ear and whispered, "Fuck me, Glimmer."</p>
<p>Catra remembered and instantly moaned her own name, as they'd done that night. </p>
<p>Then, to tease her with the very same words Catra had uttered earlier that morning, Glimmer said, "We'll save it for later."</p>
<p>Then she told her how '<em>Later!</em>' would always remind her of Catra. She laughed and said, "Later!"—meaning exactly what Glimmer wanted it to mean for a change: not 'goodbye', or 'be off with you', but 'afternoon lovemaking'. The pink haired girl turned around and was instantly on her bike, speeding the way back downhill, smiling broadly, almost singing.</p>
<p>Never in her life had she been so happy.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>After lunch Catra said she had to go back to town to hand over her last forms. </p>
<p>Glimmer was tired, and after two glasses of wine, she couldn't wait to take a nap. After kissing her mother along the way, she headed to her room. Clean, cool, crisp-starched, sun-washed sheets drawn tight across her bed—<em>God bless you, Juliet.</em> She undressed and laid down.</p>
<p>Half an hour later, or maybe sooner, Glimmer was awakened by the rich scent of coffee wafting through the house. Even with the door closed she could smell it and knew that it wasn't her parents' coffee. Theirs had been brewed and served a while ago. This was the afternoon's second brew which Juliet made after lunch. Soon she would be resting as well. </p>
<p>A heavy torpor hung in the air—the world was falling asleep. All Glimmer wanted was for Catra to pass by the balcony door and, through the half-drawn shutters, make out Glimmer's naked body sprawled on the bed. </p>
<p>The idea seized her and would not let go. She let her hand travel downwards, the thoughts of Catra filling her mind. If Catra walked in on Glimmer, she'd let her help finish the job. She continued to rub herself, till she thought she heard it, '<em>Fuck me, Catra, fuck me harder,</em>' and after a moment, '<em>Harder,</em>' It aroused her so much that practically without warning the orgasm was upon her.</p>
<p>When she was done, Glimmer felt too tired to move and decided to stay naked and get under the sheet.</p>
<p>She awoke to the sound of someone unhooking the latch of the shutters and then hooking it back. Glimmer knew it was Catra tiptoeing towards the bed and raised her arm to her. She grabbed it and kissed it, then lifted the sheet and seemed surprised to find Glimmer naked. Immediately she brought her lips to where they'd promised to return. "What did you do while waiting?" Asked, a grin in place</p>
<p>Glimmer shot up, face flushing in shame. "Sorry."</p>
<p>"Hey, it's fine. I like it." Shrugged, "May I continue?" </p>
<p>Glimmer shook her head, and Catra backed away slightly, but kept her hands on the girls legs. </p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"Let me cleanup first." </p>
<p>"<em>Why</em>?" Repeated, "I told you, I like it."</p>
<p>Glimmer watched Catra slowly inch closer again, staring at her so intensely that Glimmer's whole body felt on fire. "If you want me to cleanup first it's okay, it's really okay, I promise I won't be offended!"</p>
<p>Catra shook her head. Glimmer couldn't say why, but as Catra kept staring at her, she suddenly had a fierce urge to cry. And rather than fight it, she simply let herself go, muffling her sobs against Catra's shoulder as she hugged her.</p>
<p>"I don't want you to go." Confessed in between sobs. "Don't go."</p>
<p>"It's ok." Catra repeated over and over again. "It's ok. It's ok."</p>
<p>She was crying because no stranger had ever been so kind or gone so far for her, she was crying for the evil thoughts she had nursed against Catra that morning. And she was crying for the night before, because, for better or worse, she'd never be able to undo it —crying because something was happening, and she too had no idea what it was. </p>
<p>"Whatever happens between us, Glimmer, I just want you to know. Don't ever say you didn't know." </p>
<p>Her words made no sense. </p>
<p>But Glimmer knew exactly what she meant. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Glimmer stayed in her room long after Catra had left. When she finally awoke, it was almost evening, which put her in a grumpy mood. The ache was gone, but there was the same discomfort she'd experienced at dawn. She didn't know if it was the same feeling, resurfacing after a long hiatus, or if the earlier one had healed and had been replaced by a totally new one, resulting from that afternoon's lovemaking.</p>
<p>Would Glimmer always experience such solitary guilt in the wake of their moments together? She took a shower and put on clean clothes. </p>
<p>Downstairs, everyone was having cocktails. Spinnerella and Netossa were there again, being entertained by her mother, while her father was busily listening to Catra's description of a book. "Are you staying?" asked Angella.</p>
<p>"No, I'm going to take a walk." </p>
<p>Her mother gave her an apprehensive look, and ever so discreetly began to shake her head, meaning, 'I don't approve, you should be going out with your friends.'</p>
<p>"Let her do as she pleases." Was her father's rebuttal, which set her free.</p>
<p>'<em>Do as she pleases</em>'. If he only knew.</p>
<p>And what if he did know?</p>
<p>Micah would never object. In all likelihood, he would have never given it another thought himself.</p>
<p>That night Glimmer went to the movies then had ice cream in the piazzetta. When she returned home the guests were just about to leave. Catra was not home. Served her right. She went to her room and, for lack of anything else to do, opened her diary.</p>
<p>The entry from the night before read: <em>"I’ll see you at midnight." You watch. She won't even be there. "Get lost"—that's what "Grow up" means. I wish I'd never said anything.</em></p>
<p>Glimmer traced the words trying to recover the memory of that night's jitters. She wanted to relive those anxieties, both to mask the one she was feeling, and to remind herself that if her worst fears had suddenly been dispelled once, perhaps they might end no differently once she heard Catra's footsteps again.</p>
<p>But she couldn't even remember that night's anxieties. They were completely overshadowed by what followed them. Everything else had vanished, Glimmer remembered nothing. She tried to whisper '<em>Get lost</em>' to herself as a way of jump-starting her memory. The words had seemed so real the night before. Now they were just two words struggling to make sense.</p>
<p>Glimmer had taken a giant step. Yet there she was, no wiser and no more sure of things. They might as well not even have slept together.</p>
<p>Why did she care where Catra was? Why feel so unhinged just because she wasn't there, why sense that all she was doing was waiting for her—waiting, waiting, waiting?</p>
<p>What was it about waiting that felt like torture? </p>
<p>
  <em>If you are with someone else, Catra, it's time to come home. No questions asked, I promise, just don't keep me waiting. If you don't show up in ten minutes, I'll do something.</em>
</p>
<p>Ten minutes later, feeling helpless and hating herself for feeling helpless, Glimmer resolved to wait another this-time-for-real ten minutes. </p>
<p>Twenty minutes later, she couldn't stand it any longer. Putting on a sweater, she walked downstairs. She would go into town and check for herself. It was on her way to the bike shed, while debating where to stop first, when, in the moonlight, she caught sight of her. </p>
<p>She was sitting on one of the higher rocks, wearing the red shirt, cat ears headband, she looked just like she had in that first day. Catra was doing nothing, just hugging her knees, listening to the ripples lap against the rocks below. Looking at her, Glimmer felt something so tender that it reminded her how eagerly she had rushed to town to catch her before she'd even made it into the post office. </p>
<p><em>This is the best person I've ever known in my life. I chose her well.</em> </p>
<p>Glimmer opened the gate and skipped down the several rocks to reach her. "I was waiting for you,"</p>
<p>"I thought you'd gone to sleep." Catra spoke</p>
<p>"No. Waiting. I just turned the lights off." She looked up to the house. The window shutters were all closed. Glimmer bent down and kissed her on the neck. Catra put an arm around her. Harmless, if anyone saw.</p>
<p>"What were you doing?" Asked. </p>
<p>"Thinking." The brunette shrugged</p>
<p>"About?"</p>
<p>"Things." Replied, then, after a second, "Going back to the Fright Zone. My paperwork... You."</p>
<p>"Me?" Glimmer swallowed</p>
<p>"<em>Me?</em>" Catra laughed, mimicking her.</p>
<p>She buried her face on Catra's neck, both to be closer to her and to hide her red cheeks. "... No one else?"</p>
<p>"No one else." Assured her. "I come here every night and just sit here. Sometimes I spend hours."</p>
<p>"All by yourself?" Frowned</p>
<p>Catra nodded.</p>
<p>"I never knew. I thought—"</p>
<p>A scoff. "I <strong>know</strong> what you thought." The news couldn't have made Glimmer happier, but she decided not to press the matter. "This spot is probably what I'll miss the most." Then, upon reflection: "I've been happy here in Bright Moon."</p>
<p>It sounded like a farewell. </p>
<p>"I was looking out towards there," She continued, pointing to the horizon, "And thinking that in two weeks I'll be back at the Fright Zone." </p>
<p>Catra was right. Glimmer had made a point never to count the days. At first because she didn't want to think how long she'd stay with them; later because she didn't want to face how few were her remaining days. "In ten days when I look out to this spot, you won't be here. I don't know what I'll do then. At least you'll be elsewhere, where there are no memories." </p>
<p>Catra pulled her closer. "The way you think sometimes... There'll always be memories."</p>
<p>"We wasted so many days—so many weeks." Glimmer sighed</p>
<p>"Wasted? I don't know. We needed time to figure out if this is what we wanted." Replied, planting soft kisses on the younger girl's cheek</p>
<p>"Some of us made things purposely difficult."</p>
<p>Catra laughed, "<strong>I</strong> did?"</p>
<p>Glimmer nodded, then asked. "When did you know about me?"</p>
<p>She was hoping Catra would say, 'When I squeezed your shoulder and you almost fell into my arms.'</p>
<p>"When you blushed," she said instead. </p>
<p>"When I blushed?" Glimmer blinked </p>
<p>"We were talking about poetry; it was early in the morning, during my first week."</p>
<p>Glimmer remembered. Catra asked her if she liked poetry. She replied that she did. They began speaking back and forth, neither of them realizing how far a conversation started on the fly could go, because all the while delving deeper into their favorite poets, they were also finding occasional side alleys where their sense of humor was given free play.</p>
<p>They recited their favorite works in between bursts of laughter that made the lines sound like nonsense — when suddenly there was a moment of silence, and when Glimmer looked up at Catra she was staring at her point-blank, that cold and icy glare of hers which always disconcerted Glimmer. </p>
<p>The staring wasn't part of the conversation, or even of the fooling around; it had become its own subject. Her eyes were so piercing that Glimmer had to look away, and when she looked back at Catra, her gaze hadn't moved and was still focused, as if to say, '<em>So you looked away and you've come back, will you be looking away again soon?</em>' — which made her blush.</p>
<p>For weeks Glimmer had mistaken the stare for hostility. She couldn't have been more wrong.</p>
<p>Micah was the only one who had seen through Catra from the very start.</p>
<p>"I knew I was making you uncomfortable, I just wasn't sure why." </p>
<p>Glimmer nodded. "So you knew all this time?"</p>
<p>"Let's say I was pretty sure."</p>
<p>In other words, it had started just days after her arrival. What was everything else, then? All those swings between friendship and indifference—what were they? Her and Catra's way of keeping tabs on each other while trying to figure out their own feelings? Or were they simply a way to keep each other away, hoping that what they felt was indeed indifference?</p>
<p>"Why didn't you give me a sign?" Glimmer frowned </p>
<p>"I did!" Catra huffed, exasperated. "At least I tried."</p>
<p>"When?"</p>
<p>"After tennis once. I touched you to show you I liked you." Replied, putting her arm around Glimmer the same way she had that day. "The way you reacted made me feel like I'd molested you." Explained, making a face. "After that, I decided to keep my distance."<br/><br/>Silence.</p>
<p>"...Will you be okay?" The older girl asked</p>
<p>"I'll be okay." Answered, slipping a hand into Catra's thigh. "I've been happy here as well." </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>The next morning they went swimming together. </p>
<p>It was scarcely past six o'clock, and the fact that it was so early gave an energized quality to their exercise. As Catra floated in the water, Glimmer wanted to hold her, as swimming instructors do when they hold your body so lightly that they seem to keep you afloat with barely a touch of their fingers. Why did she feel older than Catra at that moment? She wanted to protect her from everything that morning, from the rocks, from the jellyfish, now that jellyfish season was upon them, from everything.</p>
<p>"How are you?" Glimmer asked, mimicking the question Catra had asked her the day before.</p>
<p>A smirk. "You should know."</p>
<p>At breakfast, Glimmer couldn't believe what seized her, but she found herself cutting the top of Catra's soft-boiled egg before Juliet intervened. She had never done that for anyone else in her life, and yet there she was, making certain that not a speck of the shell fell into her egg. Catra seemed happy with it, and so was she. Domestic bliss. </p>
<p>Glimmer caught her mother staring at her as she finished slicing off the tip of her own soft-boiled egg. "She still doesn't know how to do it," Explained. That she felt the need to explain herself probably told her mother a lot more than the act itself.</p>
<p>"I am sure has her ways," Angella spoke. The foot that came to rest on Glimmer's under the table told her that perhaps she should let it go before her mother knew for sure she was onto something.</p>
<p>"She's no fool," Catra said to her later that morning as she was getting ready to head up to town</p>
<p>Glimmer nodded, "Want me to come with you?"</p>
<p>"Better keep a low profile." Shook her head, "And you should finish your latest transcription anyway, I want to hear it."</p>
<p>The younger girl couldn't help but to smile as she spoke. "Later."</p>
<p>Catra laughed, amused. "Later." </p>
<p>Perhaps they were friends first and lovers second.</p>
<p>But then perhaps that's what lovers are. </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>When Glimmer thinks back to their last ten days together, she sees an early-morning swim, their lazy breakfasts, the ride up to town, work in the garden, lunches, the afternoon naps, more work in the afternoon, tennis maybe, after-dinners in the piazzetta, and every night the kind of lovemaking that could run circles around time. Looking back to these days, there wasn't ever a minute when they weren't together. </p>
<p>Their best moments were in the afternoon. After lunch, Glimmer would go upstairs for a nap just when coffee was about to be served, her father would either retire to his study or steal a nap with her mother. And by two in the afternoon, an intense silence would settle over the house, over the world it seemed, interrupted here and there either by the cooing of doves or the noise of the cicadas. </p>
<p>Catra liked to keep the windows and shutters wide open in the afternoon, the curtains being the only thing between them and life beyond, because it was a "crime to block away so much sunlight and keep such a landscape from view, especially when you didn't have it all life long," she would say as they laid naked on the bed.</p>
<p>Glimmer looks back to those ten days and regrets none of it, not the risks, not the shame, not the total lack of foresight.</p>
<p>Their minutes were numbered, but she didn't dare count them, just as she knew where all of it was headed, but didn't care to read the mile-posts. It was a time when Glimmer intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for her return journey; instead, she ate them. Catra could change her or ruin her forever, or maybe time and gossip would ultimately disembowel everything they shared and trim the whole thing down till nothing but fish bones remained. Maybe Glimmer would miss those days, or maybe she'd do far better, but she'd always know that on those afternoons in her bedroom she had held that moment sacred.</p>
<p>Until one morning she awoke and saw the whole of Bright Moon overborne by dark, lowering clouds racing across the sky. Glimmer knew exactly what this spelled.</p>
<p>Autumn was just around the corner.</p>
<p>A few hours later, the clouds totally cleared, and the weather, as though to make up for its little prank, seemed to erase every hint of fall from their lives and gave them one of the most temperate days of the season. But Glimmer had heeded the warning, and suddenly realized that they were on borrowed time.</p>
<p>Suddenly, she began to take mental snapshots of Catra, and, to her shame, drew lists:<em> the rock, the berm, the bed, the sound of the ashtray. The rock, the berm, the bed...</em> She wished she was like those soldiers in films who run out of bullets and toss away their guns as though they would never again have any use for them. Instead, Glimmer squirreled away small things so that in the lean days ahead pieces from the past might bring back the warmth. She began, reluctantly, to steal from the present to pay off debts she knew she'd have in the future. <br/><br/>In her aunt's superstitious world, anticipating the worst was as sure a way of preventing it from happening.</p>
<p>That night when they went on a walk and Catra told her that she'd be heading back to the Fright Zone within the week, Glimmer realized how futile her alleged foresight had been. <br/><br/>Bombs never fall on the same spot. That one, despite all her premonitions, fell exactly in her hideaway. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Catra was leaving for the Fright Zone the second week of August. </p>
<p>A few days into the month, she said she wanted to spend three days in Mystacor and use that time to see the famous thermal springs before flying home. On hearing that Catra was leaving earlier than anticipated and would spend a few days in Mystacor, Micah asked—with Catra's permission —if Glimmer wanted to accompany her. </p>
<p>Angella helped her pack. "You're only going for two to three days." The older woman shook her head, helping Glimmer empty and repack the backpack when it was clear there wasn't room for everything she wanted to take along. </p>
<p>She couldn't have known how her <em>'two to three days'</em> hurt Glimmer. </p>
<p>Catra on the other hand had not only packed her own duffel bag but managed to take out her suitcase and place it on the exact same spot in the bedroom where Glimmer had plopped it down the day of her arrival. </p>
<p>On that first day Glimmer had longed for the moment when she'd have her room back. Now she wondered what she'd be willing to give up if only to rewind things back to the afternoon in late June when she took Catra to the abandoned train tracks and where she received her first dose of so many 'Later's. </p>
<p>The symmetry, or the emptiness of it all, tied a knot in her throat.</p>
<p>It was a test run for their final separation. Like looking at someone on a respirator before it's finally turned off days later.</p>
<p>She was happy that the room would revert to her. In her/Catra's room, it would be easier to remember their nights. Or was it better keep her current room? Then, at least, she could pretend Catra was still in hers, and if she wasn't there, that she was still out as she so frequently used to be on those nights when Glimmer counted the minutes, the hours, the sounds.</p>
<p>When Glimmer opened her closet she noticed that Catra had left a bikini, a pair of underwear, and a clean shirt on a few hangers. She immediately recognized the shirt. And recognized the bikini. White. </p>
<p>"I want the bikini too," Glimmer said when she closed the closet door.</p>
<p>Catra smiled. "That's all?"</p>
<p>She shook her head, wrapping her arms around the taller girl. "I want the shirt too, don't forget. And the sunglasses. And the cat ears headband. And you."</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>When they arrived at Mystacor the air was thick and muggy, as if the town had been awash in a rainstorm that had come and gone and relieved none of the dampness.</p>
<p>Glimmer couldn't wait to get to their hotel and shower and throw herself on the bed, knowing all the while that, unless they had good air-conditioning, she'd be no better off after the shower. But she also loved the languor that sat upon the city, like a lover's tired, unsteady arm resting on your shoulders.</p>
<p>Maybe they'd have a balcony. It would be nice, sit on its cool marble steps and watch the sun set over the city. Mineral water. Or beer. And tiny snacks to munch on. Her father had booked them one of the most luxurious hotels.</p>
<p>They hailed a cab. Noting the name of the hotel, the cabby proceeded to make several unexplained turns. "I've been a here a billion times, no need for the shortcuts, we're in no rush" Glimmer spoke.</p>
<p>To her delight the larger of their adjoining bedrooms had both a balcony and a window, the glistening domes of numberless buildings reflected the setting sun in the vast, unencumbered vista below. Someone had sent them a bunch of flowers and a bowl filled with fruit. The note came from her aunt Castaspella: "Don't forget to come visit me, I'll be awaiting you two for dinner."</p>
<p>They had not planned on doing anything except going for dinner and wandering the streets. </p>
<p>"Am I invited, though?" Catra asked, seeming a tad uncomfortable. </p>
<p>"She said 'you two'," Glimmer replied easily. "Besides, it's aunt Casta. You know she loves you."</p>
<p>They picked at the bowl of fruit sitting by the television cabinet and peeled figs for each other. Catra said she was going to take a shower and seeing her naked made Glimmer immediately undress as well. </p>
<p>"Just for a second," She said as their bodies touched. "I wish we didn't have to go anywhere." Catra's smell reminded her of the seashore on those days when there isn't a breeze on the beaches and all you smell is the raw, ashen scent of scalding sand. </p>
<p>She loved the salt of her arms, of her shoulders, along the ridges of her spine. They were still new to Glimmer. </p>
<p>"If we lie down now, we won't make it to dinner," Catra laughed.</p>
<p>These words, spoken from a height of bliss it seemed no one could steal from them, would always take Glimmer back to that hotel room and to that damp evening, her head resting on Catra. </p>
<p>She knew that they might never have such a moment again, and wanting to do something to mark the moment, Glimmer let her hand travel Catra's body as she repeated, "You keep doing this, and there's <strong>definitely</strong> no way we'll make it to dinner." </p>
<p>They took a shower together. They had never even been in the same bathroom together. "Don't flush," Glimmer said, "I want to look." What she saw brought out strains of compassion, for Catra, for her body, for her life, which suddenly seemed so frail and vulnerable. "I want you to look at me too." Catra did more. Kissing her, pressing and massaging Glimmer's body as she showered. </p>
<p>She knew they had nothing left to hide from one another. She had never felt freer or safer in her life.</p>
<p>They would be alone together for three days, they knew no one in the city aside from Castaspella, who Glimmer, in a haze created by both the elation of being there and the dread about what it all meant, convinced herself would not say a word if she knew. They could be anyone, say anything, do anything. Glimmer felt like a war prisoner who's suddenly released by an invading army.</p>
<p>They showered together. Wore each other's clothes. It was Glimmer's idea. Perhaps she gave Catra a second wind of silliness, of youth. Perhaps Catra was playing along, watching her. Perhaps she had never been so free with anyone and Glimmer showed up in the nick of time.</p>
<p>"Catra, I'm happy," She said.</p>
<p>She looked at Glimmer in wonderment. "You're just horny."</p>
<p>"No, happy." </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Glimmer told her she'd show Catra a shortcut to her aunt's house. "I don't mind the long way. What's the rush?" She seemed on edge. </p>
<p>"Is there something I should know?" The younger girl finally asked. Was there something Catra was uncomfortable with? Something having to do with Castaspella? Someone else? Glimmer's presence, perhaps? "I can take perfectly good care of myself if you don't want to go with me." It suddenly hit her what was bothering Catra. "If you need a break from me."</p>
<p>"That's not it at all." Catra smiled kindly, putting an arm around Glimmer's waist. "I don't want anything to change or to come between us tonight."</p>
<p>"That won't happen."</p>
<p>Catra took a long look at her.</p>
<p>They decided to take the shortcut. "It was here in Mystacor where I first met you," Glimmer said.</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>Glimmer told her the story. About having brought Adora to the thermal springs during her stay in Bright Moon. About how they had finally became friends, how easily Adora had began to talk about Catra. Questions, questions, questions—Glimmer had been genuinely curious. </p>
<p>"You know all that, but you still went after me." There wasn't any judgement in her tone, or even curiosity. It was spoken almost as an afterthought. </p>
<p>"You let me."</p>
<p>As they approached the house, Catra said Glimmer should go ahead, she'd just make a quick phone call. She could have called from the hotel. Or perhaps she needed privacy. So Glimmer kept walking, when she reached the large glass doors, she suddenly got nervous. The place was packed, and through the thick glass door, she could make out people drinking and laughing.</p>
<p>It wasn't just a regular dinner. It was a party of some sorts. Her aunt saw her from a nearby window and signaled her to come in. Glimmer shook her head, indicating with a hesitant index finger that she was waiting for Catra who wasn't there yet. But the woman pushed the glass door wide open and beamed at her niece, pulling her inside.</p>
<p>"Glimmer! Come in, come in," Castaspella said. The house seemed filled to capacity, everyone smoking, chatting loudly, each holding a tiny plastic cup with what looked like scotch whiskey. "My favorite niece!" She added loudly, so that the others within hearing distance would hear. They all turned around.</p>
<p>"Angella's daughter," Hummed a nearby woman hugging her aunt from behind. "You look like your father."</p>
<p>"Thank you." Glimmer flushed, not knowing what else to reply to that.</p>
<p>"Why aren't they here?" </p>
<p>"Because they're busy," jibed a thirty-something man. "It's none of your business."</p>
<p>"I just wanted to know. There's no harm in asking, is there?" She whined with quivering mock exasperation in her voice.</p>
<p>"My God, just leave the poor girl alone, will you?" interrupted Castaspella, playfully pushing the woman away. She grabbed hold of Glimmer's hand. "I'll lead you to the food so that you can get away from these monsters."</p>
<p>The door squeaked open. Catra was trying to sneak in.</p>
<p>"Catra! Finally!" shouted her aunt, dropping Glimmer's hand and hurrying to the door. "Welcome, welcome." Everyone turned around. "One of the smartest, most talented young woman I've ever met. She's accompanying my lovely niece."</p>
<p>Glimmer wondered how much her aunt knew.</p>
<p>Catra politely said her hellos, then looked around and finally spotted Glimmer sitting on a couch. She walked up to her, put an arm around the younger girl's shoulder, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. Glimmer turned around, kissing her mouth instead. </p>
<p>Castaspella stared at them, sizing up the situation, and then smiled, as if to say: 'I won't tell a soul.'</p>
<p>Catra looked at Glimmer, meaning, 'Are you sure about this?' </p>
<p>She shrugged her shoulders, like someone reserving judgment for later. But she was not being sincere; Glimmer <strong>was</strong> sure.</p>
<p>Laughter, drinks being passed around. Spinnerella and Netossa's matching knowing grins. Glimmer almost hadn't seen them amidst the sea of people.</p>
<p>Netossa brought them a glass of scotch. "Here."</p>
<p>"For us?"</p>
<p>"Of course for you. I respect your courage," She said. "But I respect your youth more."</p>
<p>"In a few years there won't be much youth left," Catra replied easily.</p>
<p>"Yes, but by then I won't be around to notice." Laughed, offering them the plastic cups. Glimmer hesitated before accepting. It was the same brand of scotch her father drank at home.</p>
<p>Spinnerella, who had caught the exchange, said: "We would never say something that wasn't in our place to say."</p>
<p>Everything about it thrilled her. Every glance that crossed her own came like a compliment. Glimmer was electrified—by the the glances, the smiles that seemed pleased she and Catra existed, by the buoyant air in the house that graced everything.</p>
<p>She thought back to the life with her parents with their dulling lunches and dinner guests, of her senior year looming ahead. It felt like child's play. Why go away to college in a year when Glimmer could just as easily spend the rest of her four years coming to parties like that and sit and talk as she was? There was more to learn in her aunt's tiny crammed house than in any of the mighty institutions.</p>
<p>"I wish I had courage," Glimmer said, turning to Netossa as Catra stepped away to smoke.</p>
<p>"In regard to...?"</p>
<p>"In regard to..." She was going to say '<em>Everything</em>', but corrected herself. "Relationships—the way everyone seems to have everything figured out in this place—I wish I did too, like you."</p>
<p>"There'll be plenty of time for that."</p>
<p>"I wish that were true."</p>
<p>She looked at Glimmer with a pensive smile. "There's still tonight, isn't there?" She brought her palm in a sad and lingering caress to the younger girl's face, as if Glimmer had suddenly become her child. "I feel for you."</p>
<p>Glimmer could've wept. </p>
<p>"Are we toasting or what?" shouted someone. There was a melee of sounds. Both Netossa and Spinnerella walked away.</p>
<p>And then it came. A hand on her waist. She knew that hand so well. '<em>May it never let go of me tonight. I worship every finger on that hand, every nail on every one of your fingers, Catra—don't let go of me, I need that hand there.</em>' </p>
<p>Catra was leaving in three days—and then whatever they had was destined to go up in thin air. They had talked about meeting in the Fight Zone, and they had talked of writing and speaking by phone, but the whole thing was kept intentionally opaque by both girls because by not planning how to keep things alive, they were avoiding the prospect that they might ever die. </p>
<p>They had came to Mystacor in the same spirit of avoidance: the trip was a way of putting things off and extending the party long past closing time.</p>
<p>They were eloping together with return-trip tickets to separate destinations. </p>
<p>Would Glimmer be able to live without Catra's hand around her hips? Without kissing and licking the wound on her hip that would take weeks to heal, but away from her now? Whom else would she ever be able to call by her name?</p>
<p>There would be others, of course, and others after others, but calling them by her name in a moment of passion would feel like a façade. </p>
<p>Glimmer remembered the emptied closet and the packed suitcase next to the bed. Soon she'd sleep in Catra's room. She'd sleep with her shirt, lie with it next to her, wear it in her sleep.</p>
<p>More yelling, more laughter, more drinks. Someone said they should all head out to dinner together. There were about thirty people. Someone else suggested a restaurant near a lake. A restaurant overlooking a starlit night sprang to Glimmer's imagination like something out of a book. </p>
<p>"No, too far," someone said. </p>
<p>"Yes, but the lights on the lake at night-"</p>
<p>"The lights on the lake at night will have to wait for another time. Why not somewhere near here?"</p>
<p>They arrived forty-five minutes later—less than the time needed to reach the distant lake. By then it must have been eleven o'clock. The air was still very damp. You could see it on everyone's faces, and on their clothes.</p>
<p>The waitress, a woman nearing her sixties, made a quick count of how many they were and asked the help to set the tables, which was instantly done. Then she told them what they were going to eat and drink. </p>
<p>"Thank God we don't have to decide, we'd be here for another hour and by then they'd be out of food in the kitchen." Said the woman who still was wrapped around Castaspella. Glimmer wondered who exactly she was and if her parents knew about her.</p>
<p>"We want simple," Her aunt spoke, "This year, I'm in the red again."</p>
<p>Laughter and good fellowship. By then Glimmer had decided not to drink wine because the two scotch whiskeys gulped down in a rush were just starting to have their full effect. Her aunt seemed to have another idea as she poured glasses for both her and Catra.</p>
<p>"Here, take a sip of this and tell me it's not the work of a witch." Castaspella offered. "It reinvigorates me." She was looking at them, waiting. Glimmer complied, downing part of the glass. "Do you feel it?"</p>
<p>"Feel what?" Asked.</p>
<p>"The <em>invigoration</em>."</p>
<p>Glimmer swilled the drink again. "Not really."</p>
<p>"That's because, at her age, it's already there, the invigoration," added the woman hugging Castaspella. "They wouldn't understand. At their age, God knows, invigoration is the last thing they need."</p>
<p>Then, they decided to have coffee together. In the car, Glimmer was happy. But she kept thinking of how in a few days Catra would be gone. If only she'd be back in a year. </p>
<p>It was well past one in the morning when the party arrived at the chosen café. Everyone drank and complimented the apparently famous coffee. Glimmer loved watching all those people standing so close to each other, all of them sharing the same basic thing: love for the night. After coffee, when the group considered separating, someone said, "No, we can't say goodbye yet." There was a pub nearby. Why not? </p>
<p>Noticing that Catra was walking by herself, Glimmer walked back and held her hand. They did not speak. She wanted the walk never to end. The silent and deserted alley was altogether murky and its ancient cobblestones glistened in the damp air. It was as if everyone else had left the town and the emptied city now belonged to them alone. They could, if they wished, have walked in circles and neither would have known and neither would have minded.</p>
<p>In a month or so, when Glimmer came back to revisit Mystacor, being there with Catra would seem totally unreal, as though it had happened to an entirely different person. And the wish to be with Catra and to be Catra, born weeks ago, would seem just as unfulfilled as during those agonizing weeks before the kiss.</p>
<p>She came. She left. Nothing else had changed. Glimmer had not changed. The world hadn't changed. Yet nothing would be the same. </p>
<p>The bar was closing when they arrived. "We close at two." </p>
<p>"Well, then we still have time for drinks." Catra took one look at the wall of bottles on the bar and said she wanted a Horror Hall. Glimmer had never even heard of it. Apparently it was common in the Fright Zone.</p>
<p>"My, it's been years since I've had one of those," Castaspella mused. "The same for me."</p>
<p>"Me too," chimed in someone else. </p>
<p>The waiter told them the bartender had left earlier that evening, so all they could serve was beer or wine. Everyone grunted in disappointment. Catra asked what they charged for a Horror Hall. The waiter yelled the question to the girl at the cash register. She told him how much. "Well, what if I make the drinks and you only charge us for the alcohol since we are the ones mixing it?"</p>
<p>There was hesitation on the part of the waiter. The owner had long since left. "Why not?" said the girl. "If you know how to make them, go right ahead."</p>
<p>Round of applause for Catra, who sauntered her way behind the bar and, in a matter of seconds, was vigorously shaking the cocktail mixer. "Where did you learn this?" Glimmer asked.</p>
<p>"I've had a lot of odd jobs over the years. Weekends, I made a living as a bartender." Her life in the Fright Zone, each time Catra spoke of it, seemed to bring more questions than answers. It was a realm of which Glimmer had no access to since it belonged to the past. Proof of its existence trickled, in Catra's ability to mix drinks, or to quote poets, or to speak to all women, or in the mysterious letters addressed to her from all over the world.</p>
<p>Glimmer no longer envied her past, nor felt threatened by it. Didn't envy life before her, nor did she ache to travel back to the time when Catra had been her age. '<em>There's still tonight, isn't there?</em>'</p>
<p>There were at least fifteen of them left, and they occupied one of the large wooden rustic tables. The waiter announced last call a second time. Within ten minutes, the other customers had left. The waiter had already started lowering the metal gate, the jukebox was unplugged, yet Glimmer had a feeling they would be there until daybreak.</p>
<p>Third last call.</p>
<p>"Listen," interrupted Castaspella, "You know me. Why don't you let us stay? We'll call cabs when we're done. And we'll pay our tab. Another round of Horror Halls?"</p>
<p>"Do as you please," said the waiter, removing his apron. He'd given up. "I'm going home."</p>
<p>Catra came up to Glimmer and asked her to play something on the piano.</p>
<p>"What would you like?" Asked.</p>
<p>"Anything."</p>
<p>She took a sip from her second Horror Hall, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot. She wanted to play Brahms. But an instinct told her to play something very quiet and contemplative. So she played one of the Goldberg Variations, which made her quiet and contemplative. There was a sigh among the fifteen or so, which pleased her, since this was Glimmer's only way of repaying for the evening.</p>
<p>When asked to play something else, she began a Mystacor drinking song she had heard her father sing with her aunt sometimes. It caught them all by surprise, and soon everyone began to sing, though not in unison, for each sang the version they knew. </p>
<p>Everyone was ecstatic, and Glimmer was asked to play another, then another. After the third, she got up and said she wanted to go out to take a breath of fresh air. "What is it, doesn't she feel well?" Castaspella asked Catra.</p>
<p>"She probably just needs some air. I'll go with her."</p>
<p>Glimmer got out from under the partly lowered shutter and suddenly felt a fresh gust of wind on the empty alley. Catra followed her as she staggered down the dark alley. They made their way deeper into an extremely quiet street, then through another. All they heard were the alley cats and the splashing of running water nearby. "Water," Glimmer gasped. "I'm not made for Horror Halls. I'm so drunk."</p>
<p>"You shouldn't have had any. You had scotch, then wine, now this." She snickered. "No wonder you can barely walk."</p>
<p>"I think I'm going to throw up." Mumbled, eyes closed. Before she knew it, she was bent down, sick. </p>
<p>"Here, I'll hold your head." What a solace to have her head held, and what selfless courage to hold someone's head while they're vomiting. Would she have had it in her to do the same for Catra?</p>
<p>"I think I'm done."</p>
<p>"Let's wait a bit more."</p>
<p>Sure enough, another heave brought out more of that night's food and drink.</p>
<p>"Don't you chew your food?" Catra teased, smiling at her. </p>
<p>How Glimmer loved being made fun of that way. Both of them almost burst out laughing. When she looked around, she saw that she had vomited right next to the statue in honor of her ancestors who had built Mystacor. How like her to vomit right in front of it.</p>
<p>More laughter. Glimmer washed her face and rinsed her mouth with the water of a fountain they found on the way back. They returned by another equally dark, deserted, glistening side street. She stopped and Catra stopped. "The most beautiful day of my life and I end up vomiting." </p>
<p>Catra wasn't listening. She pressed Glimmer against the wall and started to kiss her, their hips pushing against each other. Glimmer eyes were shut, but she knew Catra had stopped kissing her to look around them; people could be walking by. She didn't want to look. Let Catra be the one to worry. Then they kissed again.</p>
<p>And, with her eyes still shut, she did hear two voices, old women's voices, grumbling something she couldn't quite hear. But Glimmer didn't want to think about them. She didn't worry. If Catra wasn't worried, Glimmer wasn't worried. She could spend the rest of her life like that: with Catra, at night, in Mystacor, her eyes totally shut. She thought of coming back there in the weeks or months to come — <em>the rock, the berm, the bed, the sound of the ashtray, the pizzetta, the hotel, their spot...</em></p>
<p>They returned to the bar to find that everyone had already left. By then it must have been four in the morning, or even later. The city was dead quiet. Catra stopped a street vendor and bought Glimmer a Lemon soda. The taste of bitter lemons was refreshing and made her feel better. </p>
<p>How wonderful, to walk half drunk with a Lemon soda on a muggy night around the gleaming slate cobblestones of Mystacor with someone's arm around her. On their way to the hotel, she and Catra began to sing the drinking song again, softly.</p>
<p>Glimmer can, from the distance of years now, still think she's hearing the voices of those two young women singing, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of Mystacor, that it was the last night they would ever make love again.</p>
<p>"Tomorrow let's go to the thermal springs," Glimmer said.</p>
<p>"Tomorrow is today." Catra replied. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know what you guys think o/</p></blockquote></div></div>
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